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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28533207">The Reaper</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCastleMouse/pseuds/TheCastleMouse'>TheCastleMouse</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Reaper [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Marvel Cinematic Universe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>BAMF Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Canon Universe, Dead Tony Stark, Future Fic, Gen, Kamar-Taj (Marvel), Kidnapping, Morgan Stark-centric (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Panic Attacks, Parent Tony Stark, Resurrection, Soul Stone (Marvel), Stephen Strange &amp; Wong Friendship, Superheroes, Teen Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Temporary Character Death, more tags as I think of them</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-05-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:53:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>27,200</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28533207</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCastleMouse/pseuds/TheCastleMouse</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Morgan’s eyes opened. She blinked up at the dark sky, attention settling on the full moon. Something felt wrong. Very, very wrong.</p><p>Why was she laying on the ground? Where was her bedroll and tent? <em>Where... oh right.</em> She had fallen.</p><p>Morgan pulled herself up onto her elbows and looked up towards the cliff where she had tumbled down. <em>How did she survive that? She couldn’t have possibly survived that.</em> It was so steep. It was dark out too. It hadn’t been dark when she had fallen. She must’ve passed out. </p><p>
  <em>What happened to her?</em>
</p><p>***</p><p>All Morgan Stark wanted was a relaxing summer of backpacking before she went to college, but when she’s kidnapped from the biggest trip of her summer, she needs to save herself, leading to the discovery of new powers. Choosing to take her father’s path, she enlists the help of Doctor Strange to help her master her new abilities, and confronts the person who ordered her kidnapping.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe) &amp; Stephen Strange, Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe) &amp; Tony Stark, Stephen Strange &amp; Wong</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Reaper [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2090205</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is Morgan's superhero story. I've tried to make it as canonical as possible, which involved making some educated guesses about the future direction of the MCU. I've borrowed some characters from the comics, because I didn't really want to start from scratch on side characters.</p><p>This story includes violence and a graphic panic attack. The panic attack is in a later chapter and I'll mark it so people can avoid it.</p><p>This was drafted during NaNoWriMo 2020, and is being edited as I publish. If you spot any continuity issues or any other mistakes, let me know in the comments.</p><p>I will be posting every Sunday until I finish posting every chapter, and by then I'll hopefully be done drafting the second one. There will be three. I'm cross posting on ff.net under the same username.</p><p>Enjoy it, and tell me if you enjoy it. Please comment.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was nearly a week post high school graduation when Morgan reached the trailhead. Mom had worried about the isolated nature of the camping trip, but solo backpacking trips were kind of Morgan’s bread and butter at this point. No one else in her extended family particularly enjoyed sleeping on the ground for weeks at a time, so she went alone for the most part. On all other previous trips she had brought FRIDAY, who was an excellent supervisor and better company, but Morgan had requested that she go it completely alone this time. She preferred it that way, and it would be nice to be completely by herself for once.</p><p>Denali National Park was just as spectacular as she had thought it would be this time of year. There was very little snow on the ground, but she could see the massive white-tipped mountains rising off in the distance. The fields of heather were Morgan’s favorite part thus far, the light purple flowers coloring the landscape brightly. It was a cheerful view, and she smiled as she walked.</p><p>She stayed close to the road, as was Pepper’s one main concession to Morgan forgoing her internet connection. Luckily, there were still very few people hiking this early in the summer, so her proximity to the road wasn’t particularly bothersome.</p><p>Morgan was making very good progress, despite the weight of the gear she was carrying. She did plan on spending a few weeks up here, after all, and she needed to pack in all the food she’d need. It was better than a few trips she’d been on, when Morgan had needed to carry the gallons of water one generally needed to live, but Denali had water spouts at each of the campsites. Still, she was carrying basically her body weight in equipment, which was no simple task.</p><p>She would track her progress at the next mile marker, mostly as a formality. She had spent so much time over the last few weeks planning her route that she hardly needed to track her progress. Morgan felt almost like she had walked this road before. It had been the best part about taking both dual enrollment finals in the same week, with so little time to study, she had just studied properly in advance, then planned her graduation trip in between each session. The schedule had been a killer, but the downtime had more than made up for it.</p><p>Well, no. The best part about taking her finals was that she didn’t need to worry about anything school-related until she had to go finish her college degree in the fall. Unlike years previous, when summer classes took up most of her potential hiking time, she didn’t need to do anything at all for the next few months. Those classes did provide a nice balance between having things to do and being alone with her thoughts, so she wasn’t going to complain, but Morgan did wish she got to be alone more often. Solo backpacking trips always reduced the risk of her running into reporters or overzealous Iron Man fans.</p><p>She was looking forward to school in the fall, because it would give her back the best of both worlds, especially given that her dual-enrolment during high school left less than a year of classes before Morgan got her degree. Pepper was still trying to convince her to take more time off, and take a gap year or something similar. Her mom had told her to think about it some more while she was on her trip, which she would, but Morgan wasn’t quite ready to think about life decisions yet. It was also nice to get away from her mom’s pestering on the subject, though she’d never say that to her mother’s face.</p><p>It was also nice to get away from people in general for a while, and tire herself out with strenuous physical activity, rather than by talking to people until her eyes fell out of her head and all she could do was smile and nod. Morgan stretched her arms out as she walked, basking in the sheer openness of the space around her. No cameras, no reporters, no one to bother her.</p><p>She walked for a few hours, mentally ticking off each mile marker as she passed them, absorbed in both counting each deer she saw, and by trying to calculate what time it was by watching the sun. She was pretty good at it, but the amount of time the sun was up in Alaska was a bit different than she was used to. The sun was fairly bright, and it highlighted every hill and gentle valley in sharp relief. It beat down on her, without any tree cover in the immediate area. She could see trees in the distance, and remembered from her route that she would reach them sometime before nightfall the next day.</p><p>Morgan had never been hiking in Alaska, mostly because her mother preferred it when she was closer to home. She was much more familiar with the Appalachian Mountains, having covered a thousand odd miles of the trail over the course of all three summers during high school in between her summer classes. Doing the full Appalachian Trail through was something she had on her bucket list, along with Denali. Alaska was a new experience, one she had been looking forward to doing as a legal adult, not bound by her mother’s rules. She could have come up to Denali during winter break, but she wasn’t stupid. Her only experience with 10 feet of snow had been that one winter when the Upstate New York snowfall had been much higher than usual, and when they arrived at the house in mid-January the shed had collapsed under the weight of the snowpack. So yeah, Morgan wasn’t going to go hiking in Denali in winter. It would have been foolish, and Morgan was no fool.</p><p>She reached the crest of the hill she was climbing and saw the first campground after the trail head. It was nearly empty, with the exception of a few other hikers already set up. She made for the campsite she had reserved for her first night out here. Morgan began to set up her one person tent. She had made very good time today, which pointed to her being able to make her reservations at the next two campgrounds for the first part of the trip. After that, she would need to start setting up her overnight spots on her own.</p><p><em>Everything was going to plan</em>, she thought, as she started to cook a can of chili for dinner.</p><p>***</p><p>Everything was not going to plan. The chili had made Morgan sick, and she was up part of the night trying to get the food out of her system. As a result of that, she had slept late, hoping to feel a bit better. And she did feel better by the time she woke up, but the sun was high in the sky by that point.</p><p>Morgan knew she wasn’t going to make the next campground before dark at that point, but if she left now, and overnighted as far up the trail as she could, she might make it to the third campground on the third day. Ugh. She might as well. It wasn’t like she cared particularly much about sleeping in the campgrounds, but she had made a plan and had followed it so well the day before. The thought of missing the reservations she had planned so carefully made her a little upset.</p><p>She packed up her tent and everything else she used the night before in record time, glancing up at the sky every so often, keeping close tabs on how many hours of daylight she had left.</p><p>It was about noon when the campground disappeared behind her, easing her worries. She was finally back on track.</p><p>She kind of missed FRIDAY, honestly, but the AI could be rather overbearing about sticking to the prearranged schedule. Her habits had obviously rubbed off on Morgan, given how stressed she had been that morning. It was kind of weird to be completely alone. It was typical to only carry gear and food for herself, but to not have FRIDAY chime in when she was falling behind in her usual pace was strange.</p><p>The view over the lavender colored fields was magnificent, and she thought about setting up her camera to take some pictures. She really wanted some good shots, and the lighting was so perfect, so she did as quickly as she could. Even though it would lose some time.</p><p>As she set up her camera on its stand, a bus drove past her, kicking up a slight wind which threw up some dust. It made the light look even more spectacular, so she bent down to start shooting. Morgan faintly remembered Peter going out during a light snowfall one winter, insistent that the particles would make his photos look great. He had come back completely frozen of course, but with some really nice looking shots.</p><p>Morgan reviewed her pictures, and satisfied, started to pack away the light-weight equipment. Her whole body was covered in a light coat of dust, so she brushed herself off as best she could and kept walking.</p><p>She continued to count the deer she saw, bringing her total up to 10. This one had a baby deer near it, upping the total to 11. The baby was running around the area near its mother, but still not paying any attention to the elder. It kind of reminded her of when she was little, playing superheroes. The baby deer was really cute, and made her want to take some more pictures, but she had just put her camera away. It would take too long, and she really didn’t have the time.</p><p>By this point, Morgan had reached the trees she had spotted yesterday, which was a reassuring sign that she wasn’t too far off schedule.</p><p>The sun was beginning to set as she spotted the mile marker she had been shooting for, so she continued on for a little while longer, struggling through the darkness, looking for a place to sleep. Morgan spotted a flat spot of ground just out of sight of the road that looked ideal to set up her tent, so she veered off the road, picking her way around sharp branches to get there. Her flashlight was really coming in handy right now... She unpacked as quickly as she could in the dark, then pulled out her map to try and figure out where she was. Nearly at the second campsite. She sighed in relief. That put her within a reasonable distance of the third campsite for tomorrow, if she budgeted her time properly.</p><p>She pulled out a book to read while she waited for her can of soup to warm up (avoiding the chili for now) and was quickly absorbed in The Martian. She adored realistic space stuff like it, loving how scientifically accurate it was, while still being from before the time of contact with the rest of the universe. It gave a sense of fantasy to the sci-fi book, as if she didn’t call an actual alien her aunt.</p><p>Morgan heard the sounds of vehicles passing her camping spot, but couldn't see the road. Such a spot afforded her privacy from the tour busses passing through the park. It really was ideal, and it was lucky she had spotted it. She heard another truck round the bend in the road as a deer suddenly crashed through her little clearing, pulling her attention away from her book and the sounds around her. Deer number 12.</p><p>She suddenly noticed how dark it was outside the reach of her lights, as she stared at the place the deer had reentered the trees. It looked like the deer had vanished into an abyss of nothing. Morgan couldn’t hear anything for a short moment. She turned her gaze back in the direction of her book, only to find herself staring up the barrel of a gun. The silent moment stretched on. All Morgan could hear was her heart beat.</p><p>She looked up into the eyes of the man holding the gun. Red. Not natural. The man broke the silence first. “You’re coming with us, Miss Stark.”</p><p>Mogan bolted, dropping her book and flashlight, leaving all her gear behind. She darted into the forest, using the trees as cover. There was more than one set of pursuing footsteps pounding behind her. She ran blindly, unable to see anything without her flashlight, which was definitely resting right by her book back at camp right where she had dropped it in her panic. She hadn’t hit any trees yet, thankfully, but she was hitting lesser branches. Morgan knew that she was covered in scratches from the twigs at that point, and prayed that she wouldn't run into a low hanging branch or something. She was running so fast that an actual branch would give her a concussion, if it didn’t knock her out.</p><p>The sounds of the forest around her led her in an unknown direction that was probably away from the road, as the low hum of the bus that had stopped near the camp disappeared within the first few seconds of her flight. It was mostly her footsteps and harsh breathing, along with many other pairs of running feets following her. Morgan thought she had heard an owl at one point.</p><p>She kept thinking she had lost them, unable to hear her pursuers for a moment, before a branch snapped and they were right back on her again. She couldn’t tell if it was her or them that was snapping branches, but she did her best to stay silent in the complete darkness. Morgan hid behind a tree in one of these quiet moments, trying to hear over the sound of her heartbeat. She desperately tried to calm her breathing when she heard them once more. They were moving faster than a human should be able to. All of them.</p><p>All was silent for another beat as Morgan held her breath, clinging to the rough bark of her tree with all her might.</p><p>Fingers wrapped around her arm and yanked her away from the tree. She screamed and struggled against her captor as they dragged her over tree roots and dirt, trying to keep her feet under her so she could get away. Her efforts to hit back at whoever was holding her were thwarted by the speed at which they were moving. The darkness crowded in on her, obscuring where she was placing her feet, so Morgan tripped over a root and lost her footing in one sharp movement. Her arm felt like it was going to come off with the force acting on her shoulder. The feeling of a sharp pop ricocheted through her arm as her right shoulder dislocated and it felt like her flesh had burst into flames. They kept dragging her. She kept screaming.</p><p>A few moments later, something heavy hit her on the side of her head and the pain died away into darkness.</p><p>***</p><p>One of the men flipped the girl over their shoulder, now that she was no longer struggling with everything she had. Her arm dangled uselessly toward the ground, and small rips in her skin slowly leaked blood.</p><p>He looked over gratefully at one of his team mates, the one that had hit Stark over the head with their lantern. The long gouges she had carved in his arm with her fingernails were already healing over, the scars that came as they healed flattened out in seconds, the process highlighted by the flat light of the battery lantern, now held up so the whole group could see their catch.</p><p>The Strike Team made their way back in the direction they had come from, carefully retracing their steps back to the little campsite. It wasn’t difficult, with the long path of trampled roots and twigs. They needed to put out her campfire, and make her gear look like it had been torn apart by bears. Those were the instructions they had been given, anyways. Make it look like an accident.</p><p>They reached the clearing and began to rip things apart, while the one carrying the girl tied her up and made his way up to the vehicle they came in. A stolen park tour bus was not ideal for the situation, but they couldn’t get their own trucks up past the trail head.</p><p>He tossed the girl in the very back of the bus, securing her a little better, and went to go speak with the driver. The man did not want to keep looking at her. The girl’s shoulder looked incredibly painful, and made him feel a bit sick just looking at it.  He didn’t really feel bad for her, especially when it was him that had caused the dislocation, but it was hard not to wince in sympathy.  “We’re supposed to head up the road, right?” He asked the driver.</p><p>The other man looked at him funny. “Nah, we’re supposed to go back down to the trailhead, remember?”</p><p>The two looked at each other for a moment. Then they looked down the side of the road where they knew the rest of their teammates were. “Hey guys,” the first one called, “are we supposed to go up the road or down the road?” Neither could see anything for a moment, the darkness obscuring everything further than the edge of the pavement.</p><p>The others emerged from the tree line and climbed on to the bus one by one. “Up I think.” Someone suggested. She didn’t sound terribly sure of herself, but the driver seemed to take her word for it. As soon as everyone was back on the bus, he drove off in the direction the bus was already facing.</p><p>It was completely dark everywhere, and the bus's headlights seemed to be the only source of light for miles.</p><p>Morgan Stark was tied up, unconscious in the very back row of the bus. Her head hit the window each time they drove around a bend. Everything was very much not going to plan.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I'm no longer cross-posting on fanfiction.net because their stats interface is currently broken and I don't want to deal with that right now. Maybe I'll post it there again some other time.</p><p>This chapter is probably the one with the most graphic violence out of all of them, so maybe skip it if that bothers you. But the warnings did say what they said, I guess.</p><p>Let me know if you spot any mistakes, and review please to feed the author.</p><p>See you next week!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Morgan awoke to an extremely inconvenient sunbeam directly in her eyes, and her head pounding like someone was banging on her skull with a sledgehammer. It took her a moment to realize where she was, and why exactly she was sitting in the backseat of a tour bus. From the time she opened her eyes to the second she realized she was tied up, she processed exactly how she felt. Her right arm was numb, and from what she could see, it was swelled up and fire engine red. Morgan closed her eyes, blocking out everything around her.</p><p>She had been kidnapped. From a trip that no one was supposed to know she had been taking. Damn. She could hear her captors arguing quite loudly from the front of the bus. They were arguing about how some of them didn’t think they were going the right way. From the sound of it no one was paying attention to her. Reasonably sure that no one was paying any attention to her, Morgan felt comfortable opening her eyes again.</p><p>She was sitting in the very back seat of a park tour bus, surrounded by haphazardly arranged gear and weapons. She was also right next to the back door of the bus. Every single other person on board was packed in the first ten rows.</p><p>Morgan tested her bonds gently. Paracord around her wrists and ankles, and her arms were bound behind her back. The lack of sensation in her right arm worried her slightly, and she vaguely remembered her shoulder dislocating right before she was knocked out. She didn’t have any gear, except a single hunting knife she could still feel stuffed down her hiking boot. She put it there for emergencies, like, bear related emergencies. This was certainly not a bear related emergency. Besides, it was unlikely she could reach it without jostling her arm, which she did not want to do.</p><p>This was unfortunately not the first time Morgan had been kidnapped, but the last time it had happened was years ago. FRIDAY had tracked her down quickly and Peter had come to save her. <em>It would be fine,</em> she thought, <em>FRIDAY would… oh no. There’s no FRIDAY this time.</em> With a jolt, she remembered that her phone, the only trackable object she had brought, was totally powered down in a pocket of her backpack. Which was probably back at her camp. She was very much alone.</p><p>The bus rattled as it went around a corner at top speed, and Morgan suppressed the urge to move to a more secure part of the seat. Instead, she fiddled her ankles around a bit in worry. <em>Fiddled… oh!</em> The ropes around her ankles were a bit loose, possibly loose enough that she could get out of them. That of course didn’t solve the problem of her being on a bus careening up the side of a mountain, but that was a problem for later.</p><p>Morgan fiddled a bit more with her feet, actually trying to loosen the ropes now. The loops loosened more as she played around with them, and the low level noise of the bus buzzed in symphony with the pounding in her head. She was also still wearing her boots, which was a good thing. Losing her shoes would absolutely prevent any escape attempt. She was slightly surprised they didn’t think of taking them, but thanked her stars that none of them had thought of it.</p><p>The bus screeched to a stop as she finally managed to pull her feet out of the ropes. She let her head hit the back of the seat in front of her, as if she was still out of it. Morgan regretted it immediately, but the ploy worked, and as the kidnappers all piled out of the bus to eat lunch, only one came to check on her for a short moment. They left quickly with the others after they checked her, not noticing her feet were no longer tied up.</p><p>The bus was empty. It was also not currently moving, which Morgan determined was probably the factor that should decide her escape. She’d rather actually have a chance to get away than to jump off of a moving vehicle and break every bone in her body. It was less important that the kidnappers would probably spot her. It was her upper body that was hurt, and she could still run. This was her chance.</p><p>Morgan carefully pulled herself up and turned around, cursing the lack of arm mobility and sensation, as she pushed down the door lever with her left hand and opened the emergency exit at the back of the bus. Alarms blared, surprising her so much that she lost her footing and fell out of the opening.</p><p>She landed on her right side, biting her tongue as she felt something snap under her, ridding that arm of its numbness in a single moment. She could feel her dislocated shoulder, and the new break in incredible detail. She hardly suppressed her scream, letting out a pitiful whine that fought through her efforts. Pain raced through her as she struggled to her feet and began to run. They were chasing her again. Morgan’s mouth was filled with blood from biting down on her tongue, and drops of blood trickled down her chin. Her thoughts were clouded by the shooting agony in her arm, and she ran near the edge of the road. Which was also the edge of a cliff.</p><p>Morgan heard calls to catch her from near the front of the bus, and she tried to run faster. A sharp sound echoed from somewhere, then she stumbled over what seemed to be nothing, but then she put down her left foot. Fire ran up her leg as she stumbled again, this time in the direction of the cliff face. They had shot her in the leg, and it felt like her shin bone had been replaced with acid. Her body felt like it was glitching, unable to process the areas of hurt she had gained. Everything just felt like one open wound.</p><p>Unable to control her body in any meaningful way, she wasn’t unable to right herself from her stumble, and slid off the road, down the side of the cliff.</p><p>Morgan could barely feel it as she fell head over heels down the mountainside, only the pain each tumble added to her body. One of her legs crunched under her, trapped in a rock as she rolled. Her right shoulder made a terrible cracking sound as she landed on it funny, adding to the numbness on that side of her body, and leaving her right arm totally limp. A sharp rock tore open a long gash in her side, pulling away a chunk of her shirt as she rolled away from it.</p><p>Her fall slowed as she reached the bottom of the ravine, but not before she hit a tree head on. Morgan’s head felt like it had been split open, and she felt things in her forehead move as she closed her eyes as tight as she could. Blood was the first thing that covered her sight when she opened them again, and she came to a rest in a snowy clearing, the harsh tumble ending in one final turn. The next thing she saw was black seeping into the outline of her scarlet-toned vision.</p><p>Morgan caught sight of a lone deer, springing away from where it had been foraging a moment before, surprised by the broken human.</p><p>Her last coherent thought was to count that deer as her 13th. Black overtook her vision, and for once, the mind of Morgan Stark was totally silent.</p><p>***</p><p>The members of the Elite Roxxon Strike team peered down the steep cliff face at the body of their target from the paved road.</p><p>“Who’s going to climb down there?” Asked the man who drove the bus. Everyone avoided everyone else’s eyes. “We were supposed to get her alive, you fools! No guns, remember?”</p><p>One of the women pinched her nose. “And somebody’s gotta tell the boss what we’ve done.”</p><p>They all looked at the man who held the gun in the girl’s face in the beginning. He sighed. “We’ve gotta get out of here at least. No one was supposed to know what was going on. We can’t be implicated in it.” The man rubbed his face with his hands. Everyone else looked away. “As leader, I will tell the boss what happened. But someone else needs to have shot her. I’m not going to die for this mission.”</p><p>The leader looks around at each of the people. No one meets his eyes, and one by one they all creep back onto the bus. He walked over to one of the spots of blood, and scuffed at it with his foot. This mess was going to get them all in a world of trouble. But there was no time to get the blood off the road. It was more important to get out of there.</p><p>The man looked down the cliff at the body, before he went to join them. It looked so small from up here. Hopefully, some carnivore would find her, and destroy the evidence for them before the body was found. No one would be noticing she was gone for a while anyway.</p><p>***</p><p>Blood seeped from the wounds in the girl’s body as the sky darkened. She was resting on her right side, her arm and shoulder completely collapsed under her. Her right hand had slipped out of the rope tying her up at some point while she fell, blood likely easing the way, with the fingers looking as crushed as the rest of the arm. One of her legs was splayed out at an angle typically impossible for the human body to achieve, collapsed slightly, and the other had a gaping hole in the calf.</p><p>The worst part still was the head wound, bleeding quite a bit, as head wounds tend to do. The gash wasn’t deep enough to show bone at a single glance, but little flecks of white bone poked out of it. The rest of her was in sorry condition, but it was obvious that it was the head wound that had killed her.</p><p>The snow around the body was no longer white, stained an ugly brown color. It looked even uglier in the dying light. The sky itself looked lovely, streaked with oranges and reds. There were even a few stars out.</p><p>When the thirteenth deer had run, it had driven away all the other animals in the area. The ravine was quiet and empty, the spectre of death covering it completely.</p><p>The sky turned black as the sun finally set. The only light left were the stars. There was no moon shining down tonight.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I finally figured out how to do italics in HTML, which was just in time for this chapter. Most of it is in italics. I still haven't figured out how to center my text breaks, but that's less important. The previous chapters have been corrected with italics, but it's not as important as it is in this chapter.</p><p>This chapter was not beta read, only edited by me, so mistakes might have slipped though. As always, let me know if you spot anything.</p><p>And feed me with comments please. :)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Morgan-the-five-year-old was too young to understand when her father died. All she knew was that everyone was very sad. She had no idea that recordings were all she had left of the person she was closest to for the first five years of her life. She didn't understand that day why people she had never met were crowding on the dock out back, and why they were putting that funny metal thing that Mommy loved in the lake.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Morgan-the-eighteen-year-old understood very well that she would never see her father again after that day. She understood that the thing her mother had put in the lake was Dad’s first arc reactor, and it kept him alive for years. She knew that the people she didn’t know that day out back all knew her father, and also loved him very much.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Morgan-the-eighteen-year-old also understood where her father went. And why. And she understood that he loved her. Even though he didn’t come back. That didn’t mean she didn’t want to see him again. So she could really appreciate him, aware of what he sacrificed. She understood why he did it, she just missed him.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It wasn’t the only funeral she had ever been to, but it was the only one she really remembered. It had always felt a bit strange, remembering something that happened so long ago, but she had memories even before then.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It was always memories of her father, only her father--</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Snap!</em>
</p><p>
  <em>***</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Morgan was falling. She was falling down a snow-covered cliff, bouncing against the irregularities in the rock, leaving behind bloodstains in the snow with every bump.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Morgan was falling. She was falling alongside a dark gray cliff, thankful that at least this time the way down wasn’t so unpleasant. She knew that it was the bottom that would hurt. She fell for a long time.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Morgan was falling. She wasn't expecting to fall, but she fell anyway. They had waited for her on the other side. And now she was falling. Again. Morgan wondered if there was a bottom to hit this time.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Morgan was pushed. She struggled. An orange-eyed Morgan pressed a metal bar into the neck of a brown-eyed Morgan.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Snap!</em>
</p><p>
  <em>***</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Snap!</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Morgan’s father passed through the barrier between life and death, surrounded by people who had fought alongside him.</em>
</p><p>Dad! <em>No, not there! She didn’t want to see him like that!</em></p><p>
  <em>Morgan knew she had been home that day, watched over by Uncle Happy. She wished she had gotten to say goodbye to him then, but she was a little bit glad now that she hadn't. She had never wanted to remember her father like this, hurt and lifeless. He was always strong and healthy in her memories.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Snap!</em>
</p><p>
  <em>***</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Morgan stood in a landscape colored orange. It was mostly empty. Just a few rocks. The landscape itself was interesting, covered in mountains and ravines. Morgans took a step further away from the chasm closest to her. She shivered, but out of fear. Not cold. There was no temperature in this barren, extraterrestrial landscape.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>A staircase appeared in front of her. Smooth and white, not orange; and perfectly proportioned, other than the fact that they were floating and had no supports. It vanished into the orange sky.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She felt an urge to climb them. Morgan took the first step up the stairs. Then another one. And another one. She could hear something calling her name behind her, but didn’t look back. She needed to climb those stairs. More than she had ever needed to do anything in her whole life.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She climbed, and she climbed, and she climbed; resolutely keeping her eyes straight ahead, to avoid looking over the sides. Morgan climbed into the sky, leaving behind whatever it was she was leaving behind. She could feel her chest begin to ache, right in the middle. The pain grew until it felt as though someone had taken a scoop of flesh out of her chest. Aside from that, she felt empty on the inside.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Morgan continued to climb, until she could no longer bear the pain. She stopped for a moment, pressing her hands to the epicenter of the hurt, trying to stop it from radiating out into the rest of her body. There was nothing missing. It was as solid and as generally chest-like as ever.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She grew lightheaded as the pain increased even more. Suddenly, with a loud snap, the stairs disappeared from under her.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Morgan was falling. And she fell, and fell, and fell.</em>
</p><p>***</p><p>A girl laid at the edge of a snowy clearing, the ground around her curiously stained brown. Her clothes were also stained brown, which was a fair indicator that all the brown was really just old, dried blood. It didn’t seem to have come from any place, because the girl didn’t have a single wound deep enough to bleed on her. The uninformed onlooker might even assume that she had traded clothes with a corpse and laid down in the spot someone else had bled out in.</p><p>There were no onlookers though. Not yet.</p><p>The moon had just begun to rise, and cast strange shadows over the small, empty piece of land. They stretched over the girl, making her face look almost monstrous. As the moon continued to rise, the girl’s face was cast in light, illuminating the last vestiges of a massive scar on her forehead, as it disappeared completely.</p><p>She almost looked like she was sleeping, if not for the slightly uncomfortable-looking sprawl her limbs were engaged in.</p><p>Suddenly a snap ran out in the darkness. It almost sounded like a branch breaking.</p><p>A second snap rang out. The girl opened her eyes. Glowing orange eyes. There seemed to be nothing behind them though, as her gaze didn’t move from the black nothingness of space above.</p><p>The world was silent for a long moment, seemingly waiting for the girl to do something. And something she did. Her eyes continued to stare blankly towards the sky, but she began to get up, all the while focused on above.</p><p>She stood, back straight and feet planted firmly on the ground. Her head was tilted up to the sky, as she continued to stare.</p><p>Her eyes finally moved, still staring blankly, but seemed to search for something in the dark expanse.</p><p>A star flared orange for a moment, the girl’s eyes locking on it. As it went out, her eyes faded from orange to brown slowly. When the orange was completely gone, for a moment, her entire body seemed luminous, before it too faded out.</p><p>She fell like a puppet with its strings cut, if a puppet falls delicately on its back.</p><p>This time, she laid on the snowy ground in a position that looked fully like she was sleeping. Her eyes were shut tight, and her limbs were arranged perfectly parallel to her body.</p><p>The ravine was silent, and the moon was full and high in the sky. There was not a single cloud blocking the stars, and there was no wind at all. Everything felt extremely still. It felt as though the world was holding its breath. Waiting for something.</p>
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<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The plot thickens, and we start with the really strong foreshadowing. The details matter, at least as far as I've edited for plot continuity. Assume everything will matter later.</p><p>This is the second worst cliffhanger in the story. Yes, I ranked them. I'm also not sorry in the slightest that you will have to wait until next week to figure out what's going on.</p><p>But don't worry about Morgan too much, she's just in shock.</p><p>Let me know if you spot any mistakes, like a word that is clearly not the correct word for that sentence. Sometimes I miss letters when I'm typing and I'm not great at catching when that happens.</p><p>No one beta read this chapter. The mistakes are mine only.</p><p>Please review, and maybe I'll have enough motivation to edit more chapters.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Morgan’s eyes opened. She blinked up at the dark sky, attention settling on the full moon. Something felt wrong about it, like her subconscious was poking at her. Trying to bring her attention to… something.</p><p>Why was she laying on the ground? Where was her bedroll and tent?<em> Where... oh.</em> She had fallen. She had been kidnapped.</p><p>Morgan pulled herself up onto her elbows and looked up towards the cliff she had fallen down.<em> How did she survive that? She couldn’t have possibly survived that. It was so steep.</em> It was dark too. It hadn’t been dark when she had fallen. She must’ve passed out. It would be entirely reasonable for her body to react like that after what she had just gone through. She shook with a faint tremor, reacting to her memory of the intense pain.</p><p> But that’s what it was. A memory. Like she hadn’t been shot in the leg, or dislocated her shoulder, or broken her arm, or fallen down an actual cliff. Morgan looked down at herself. She was covered in dried blood, but there were no wounds? Hurriedly, she bent down to inspect her leg. She <em>knew</em> she had gotten shot there, it was why she had lost her balance and fell.</p><p>Perfect, unblemished skin.</p><p>Morgan felt faint, confused out of her mind. She had to be dead. There was no other explanation for what was happening to her. The afterlife must be a cruel place, for her to wake up in the place she died, covered in what was probably her own blood.</p><p> It felt like the world was pressing in on her, and her chest felt empty.</p><p>The empty feeling suddenly flared into pain, and she fell to the ground, clutching at her heart. She stared up at the full moon. Why was the moon full? It shouldn’t be full yet. That’s what was wrong.</p><p>The world was quiet. Morgan had dreamed of something while she was out. Orange and staircases. Something calling out to her.</p><p>As she tried to remember the dream, details of the scene flooded back to her. The voice had kept screaming for her, even after she had ignored it. But the need to climb had been all-consuming. She had needed to reach the top of those steps more than anything she had ever needed to do in her life.</p><p>But she hadn't. She had fallen instead. That seemed like a bit of a theme to the dreams. Morgan remembered the sight of falling alongside a grey cliff. Of falling into nothingness, forever. Of being pushed? Perhaps it was her brain’s way of processing how she had died. By falling down a cliff. It was not of her own choice or her own mistake of course, but still! She had been hiking mountains for years and never once had she fallen down anything. It felt like the universe was laughing at her.</p><p>Morgan breathed for a moment. She was actually very angry at the way she had died. It seemed like a rather anticlimactic way to go out, and with something she was supposed to be so capable in? It felt like part of her soul had been sucked out. She had never fallen before. Never.</p><p>She felt so alone. Morgan wished someone else was there with her.</p><p>In her mind's eye, uncalled for, rose the images of her father's death. Morgan could hardly feel her body as she drifted on the sharp, vivid memory that definitely wasn’t hers. She hadn’t been there when her father had died. A battleground wasn’t a friendly place for anyone, let alone a five-year-old. Those couldn’t be her memories.</p><p>And yet she felt them with the lucid recall of someone who had actually been there. Of someone like Mom, or Peter, or Uncle Rhodey. Why did she need to watch her dad die? When she had just died herself? It was rather sadistic of the afterlife to do that to her. She didn’t want this. She didn’t want to be here. She wanted to be at home, with her mother, or if she needed to be trapped in a memory, then one of her and her dad, from when she was young. A happy one.</p><p>But still. She didn’t decide to see this, but she would soak up every second of seeing her dad.</p><p>Morgan watched the scene, enthralled by the realism of it, and the emotion that it carried. In her daze, she whispered “Dad”, as if to call out for him, for a man that had been dead 13 years. As if he could hear her from this little clearing at the base of a cliff in the middle of nowhere.</p><p>As if she wasn't dead, and this wasn't all just a dream.</p><p>As the false memory fades away, the pain in Morgan’s chest fades away, replaced by a feeling of emptiness again. Once more she calls out for her father, pleading for him not to go. He was the only person who could greet her in death after all. <em>So why was he leaving?</em> He couldn’t leave. He couldn’t leave her alone.</p><p>Morgan writhed on the ground, the feeling of emptiness was somehow worse than the pain from before, spreading out through her body like a dark cancer. It made her feel like she was falling, like she was the one to blame for her fall. Like she was the reason her father had left.</p><p>Her voice broke as she screamed, clawing at her chest, trying to dislodge the unnatural feeling from her flesh. It felt as though it was tainting her, corrupting her. She clawed all the way through her own skin, the blood she drew adding to the dried blood already staining her clothes, the bright scarlet looking even more vivid compared to the brown in the light of the full moon.</p><p>Morgan’s frenzied movements soon stopped, exhaustion weighing down on her, although the empty feeling didn’t ease even slightly.</p><p>She panted, drawing in lungfuls of cold, hard air, which burned her lungs and she began to cough. Hard. Morgan felt wetness trickle down her chin from the corner of her mouth. She was now laying on her front, propped up by her forearms, watching with a sense of detachment as yet more scarlet stained the already blood-stained snow.</p><p>Eventually, the coughing stopped, and Morgan was able to pull herself up further, sitting back onto her legs. She took a moment to breath again, with shallower breaths, not eager to repair the events of just a moment previous.</p><p>She could feel her heartbeat, and could hear it in her ears. A bit strange for a person that was dead, but who was she to judge the way the afterlife worked?</p><p>Morgan looked back up at the sky. The stars twinkled, and the sight of them claimed her full attention. They were still the same stars she had looked up at the night before, before all of this had started. They were still the same stars she could hardly see in New York City. They were still the same stars she had watched on the dock out back of the lake house, waiting for her father to come home, so he could watch the stars like they always did together. And she still knew all their names from those nights, when Tony would show her where each constellation was, and what their names were.</p><p>A star flashed orange, directly overhead. The ache in Morgan’s chest eased completely, returning to how it normally felt. She took another deep breath, finally able to without a struggle. She watched as the deep scratches she had carved into herself healed over faster than any wound should be able to. Once again she felt a strange distance from the events, simply staring as she healed before her eyes.</p><p>The afterlife was such an interesting place.</p><p>Morgan looked around the clearing for the first time. It was still snowy, just stained in some of the areas around her, which Morgan did not really want to think about. There was a tree right at the base of the cliff with a big brown smear on it that Morgan also didn’t want to think about. Other than that it was quite nice in her little clearing.</p><p>She surveyed it.</p><p>Snow, blood-stained snow, trees, one blood-stained tree, some little bushes, a glowing orange man, a rather nice view of the sky--</p><p>Morgan turned her whole body in the direction of the glowing orange man. <em>What.</em> She tilted her head at him, in much the same way one might squint to make sure they were seeing the right thing. She also pinched herself a second later. Nothing changed. There was still a glowing orange man standing in her clearing.</p><p>He was looking at her like eye contact wasn’t a thing, or at least not something he was capable of. It looked like he was examining her for wounds, with his brow creased in concern. Morgan couldn’t hear anything from his direction. No breathing sounds, no crunching snow beneath his feet. For that matter there didn’t seem to be any footsteps surrounding him, like he had been dropped from the sky. “I’m hallucinating,” she muttered under her breath.</p><p>The man’s eyes snapped up to meet her own as soon as she said that, making contact with hers. His were blown wider than looked comfortable, and his whole body wound up in surprise.</p><p>They blinked at each other for a long moment. Neither of them said anything.</p><p>“You can see me?” asked the man, sounding like that was the most preposterous thing he had ever heard.</p><p>Morgan could hardly breath. She examined him closely, breaking the eye contact to do so. She had seen him just a moment ago. Right? It was like her vision had gotten up and walked out of her mind instead of just disappearing.</p><p>It was indeed clear to the man that she could see him from the way her eyes jumped from one part of him to the next, focusing on him, not the background. But she had waited too long to respond. The man got down on his knees, so he was on the same level as Morgan.</p><p>He waved his hand in front of her and asked again, “You can see me?” He waited.</p><p>Morgan could hear the blood rushing in her ears and it drowned out everything she might have heard. She couldn’t tell if the man was saying something, or if she was saying anything. All of the shock of the night caught up to her in that moment, nearly incapacitating her. Little orange sparks burts at the edge of her vision.</p><p>She brought her eyes up from the ground where they had focused, making crazed eye contact. She was breathing heavily, and had to focus quite hard on evening it out.</p><p>The world once again stood still, waiting for her to make a move.</p><p>“Dad?” Morgan Stark whispered.</p>
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<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is a chapter I'm slightly worried about the characterization in, because I wrote it when my grasp on the characters wasn't very strong. But I'm not feeling like fixing it right now, so some people might feel a little OOC. Just pretend it isn't or something.</p><p>Please enjoy and review, and I'll see you here next week.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tony Stark and Morgan Stark stared at each other in shock. Neither of them said anything.</p><p>Morgan began to laugh, a funny crazed sound that started in her chest and stopped just behind her teeth. It was utterly hysterical, and she broke eye contact with her father so she could look up at the sky in disbelief. She rubbed her eyes with the base of her palm as her laughter shifted into heavy sobs.</p><p>“I’m dead,” she cried, “I’m actually dead. Mom isn’t going to know what happened to me. No one knows I’m dead. I’m just going to be missing.”</p><p>Tony was making shapes with his mouth as if he wanted to say something. “You aren’t dead, Morgan. I can tell.” She shook her head violently.</p><p>“I’m dead. There’s no other way you’d be here. There’s no way I survived that fall.” Morgan gestured to the cliff face. Tony looked up at it.</p><p>“You fell down that?” His eyes were wide and he took a step closer to her. Morgan could hardly see him through the haze of the tears in her eyes. She nodded. Tony looked horrified, and closed the distance between them to wrap her in a hug. He didn’t feel quite solid, but she could feel his body heat; and she hugged him back, settling into his embrace like it hadn’t been years.</p><p>“But you’re dead. I must be dead,” she argued, voice slightly muffled by her dad’s shoulder. He tightened his hold on her, shaking slightly.</p><p>“Mo, you can’t be dead. You still have a heartbeat, you’re still solid, and you can still interact with the physical world. There are pretty obvious differences between the living and the dead.” Tony stoked her hair, trying to calm her down.</p><p>Morgan took a few deep breaths. Tony did the same, and she noted how she could feel him taking in air, but couldn’t hear it. “Then why can I see you? Why are you here?”</p><p>He released her and took a step back, pausing, his brow wrinkling as he thought over the question. “I-- you know, I don't know."</p><p>***</p><p>The sun was barely visible over the crest of the mountains by the time they decided Morgan needed to get back up to the road somehow. The two of them had spent most of the few hours before sunrise staring at each other, and fussing over Morgan’s nonexistent injuries. They had avoided talking about the fact that Tony was dead. They also had avoided talking about why Morgan could see him. The whole issue had been quickly delegated to <em>sensitive topics</em> and they hadn’t touched on it since Morgan had accepted she was in fact, alive.</p><p>It was more important to find a way out of the clearing first, or at least that was their excuse.</p><p>They really just didn’t want to talk about it.</p><p>The cliff was less steep than it had felt while she was falling down it, and it was actually more gentle than some slopes she had climbed before. It was hard climbing, but not impossible. The trees made it easier to climb, providing places to hold on to, and roots as footholds. Morgan found a bloodstain on one of the very first trees. She didn’t mention it to Tony.</p><p>She made it to the top in what seemed like no time at all, and turned back to see if her father had followed. He was looking at her from the foot of the cliff, and seemed to clip out of existence for a moment before appearing next to her. She stared at him. He stared down the cliff to where he had been standing only a second before.</p><p>“You fell all that way?” He asked.</p><p>“Apparently,” Morgan blinked at him some more, waiting for him to look at her, and when he did, she asked, “How did you get to the top of the cliff?”</p><p>“I just appeared. It’s the cool part about being dead. You can be anywhere you want to be,” Tony looked up at her softly, “It’s how I found you last night actually.”</p><p>“Excuse me?”</p><p>“You called out for me. I could hear you, so I came.”</p><p>Morgan remembered pleading for her vision of her father to not leave her, while she was still dreaming. <em>I guess I did ask him not to go</em>, she thought, but only said, “Huh,” out loud.</p><p>She looked around them, scanning the visible road. “I think I may know where we are. I saw this bit of road on the maps.” Tony nodded for her to continue. “I’m pretty sure there’s a visitor’s center a few miles in that direction.”</p><p>“What’s the plan once we get there?” Tony asked.</p><p>Morgan blinked. She had not thought that far ahead. She was covered in dried blood and looked incredibly suspicious, aside from having no gear. On the matter of no gear, she also had no food. And also on that matter, she wasn’t hungry, which was very strange given that she hadn’t eaten since she ate dinner, two(?) nights ago. <em>Weird.</em></p><p>"You alright?” Tony looked worried, and Morgan felt a bit bad for getting distracted. This was the first time she had seen her dad since she was 5, and she was getting wrapped up in the weird stuff that was going on.</p><p>“I’m fine. I was just thinking about my gear,” she answered, “The visitors center is this way.” She set off walking, and Tony’s ghostly form hurried behind her. “The plan for when we get there is to try and find a phone so I can call Doctor Strange.”</p><p>“You think this all,” he said, gesturing to the two of them, “Is magic?”</p><p>“I don’t see anything else it could be, except of course, if I’m hallucinating everything.” She shrugged, mostly to herself and carried on walking. “I do have a few questions about all of,” she gestured to Tony, “this.”</p><p>He pretended to be offended for a moment before he said, “Ask away.”</p><p>Morgan thought for a moment. Her father seemed to be a lot less surprised about what was going on than she was, and also seemed to have a bit more knowledge about the whole dead thing, him being dead and all. He also seemed to interact with her like he already knew her, countering whatever she said, like he had known her her whole life. In fact, the only time he had really interacted like she remembered him doing was when she had started hyperventilating when she thought she was dead.</p><p>“So,” she began, “why do you seem to know me as an adult?”</p><p>He rubbed the back of his neck with his hand, with some amount of awkwardness. “I keep an eye on you guys.” She gestured for him to elaborate, “I’m sometimes bound to live in the afterlife, but most of the time, I can keep tabs on what happens in the living world. I like seeing that all of you are safe.” He smiled sadly.</p><p>“So you did watch me grow up?”</p><p>“Pretty much.”</p><p>Tony looked sad. Morgan understood why, of course, but seeing him sad was mostly new to her. He always looked happy in pictures, but she could also remember him on late nights where she’d sneak out of bed, looking at the old pictures he had hanging up. She knew now that one had been of him and Peter. But he had mostly looked tired on those nights more than anything. She just couldn’t summon up a solid image of him totally sad. She watched his face carefully as he pushed away the emotion.</p><p>“Anything else?” It was clear he wanted to move on from the topic.</p><p>“Hmm,” she pondered, “why can I see you? Is there anything different about me than last time you saw me?” Tony considered this question for a long time, humming quietly to fill up the silence while he thought.</p><p>They rounded a bend in the road and could see out over the landscape, now that they were out of the mountainous area. She could see a tiny speck in the distance she knew was the visitor’s center. Morgan could feel her stomach finally begin to cramp from lack of food, but didn’t mention it. It was strange to be walking next to a person who didn’t make any noise; breathing or footsteps, and she kept startling slightly every time she caught sight of Tony out of the corner of her eye.</p><p>Tony finally answered. “I don’t know why you can see me. I’ve never seen anything like this,” Morgan opened her mouth to speak, but he continued, ”And actually, there is something a bit different about you.” Morgan stopped walking and turned fully towards him. “You don’t have the same full glow that dead people do, but you’re glowing around the edges.”</p><p>“What does that mean?” She asked, suitably distracted from his first comment, which didn’t in fact support his claim that she was still alive.</p><p>“You glow around the edges now,” he shrugged, “you never have before. I’ve never seen anyone glow like that before.”</p><p>With that to chew on, Morgan and Tony phased into comfortable silence, walking the even, paved road. Morgan kept a lookout for tour buses, both eager to avoid such a kidnapping experience again, and not wanting to explain her blood-covered state to anyone quite yet, before she had thought of a reasonable excuse.</p><p>They walked miles as the day wore on, getting closer and closer to the visitor’s center, it morphing slowly from a dot on the horizon to an actual building. Morgan estimating the time every so often, looking up at the sun. She could feel herself getting hungrier, and attempted to distract herself by counting deer again. However, this time there were none to be found.</p><p>She also thought a little bit about what she would tell the people at the visitor's center about why she was covered in blood. She could tell them that she had been attacked by a bear, but she didn’t have any actual woulds. She couldn’t explain away the blood as something else, because it was pretty clearly blood. Morgan eventually decided that she would only tell that she had been attacked and lost her gear, and she would only tell someone if they asked her directly. It didn’t actually explain the blood, but she figured that Doctor Strange would be there by the time the bloodstains would be a problem.</p><p>But Morgan mostly thought about Tony. Her dreams of him had dredged up feelings of loss she hadn’t felt so acutely in years, and with his sudden appearance she felt like she had whiplash from thinking about it. It felt so incredibly weird.</p><p>As the sun grew high in the sky and noon approached, and the visitor’s center grew closer, she decided she would just enjoy having him back for however long she had him. She wouldn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth after all, and this all was just too weird to comprehend with a severe lack of food and what was possibly a concussion. She couldn’t have gotten off her fall down the cliff scot-free. There must be <em>something</em> wrong with her.</p>
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<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is a short one, in which a lot of exposition happens. Strange shows up, and the Denali National Park part of the plot comes to an end.</p><p>There will be magic soon. Don't worry.</p><p>Read, review and let me know if you spot any mistakes.</p><p>See you all next week.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>By the time they reached the visitor’s center, Morgan was feeling very uncomfortable. The blood on her clothing was stiff and itchy, and she was absolutely starving.</p><p>She and Tony had been silent for most of the rest of the walk, simply watching each other out of the corner of their eyes. Morgan had caught his eye a few times, and they had laughed about being caught doing the exact same thing, before returning to doing it again.</p><p>She was so not ready to talk with anyone, but she didn’t have anything to get help with, so it needed must. Morgan hoped that she might be able to find a jacket or something to cover up with. It would be better than walking in fully a vision of gore.</p><p>The silence between the father and daughter was comfortable for the most part, both struggling to find anything to say in the face of the situation. Neither wanted to disturb the peaceful thing between them either, or at least as peaceful as two people with one of them covered in dried blood could be.</p><p>The blood really was uncomfortable. Now that she had the time to remark on it, Morgan found that it was almost all she could think about.</p><p>It was also really strange to be walking around without a massive backpack on.</p><p>But anyway. They had nearly reached the visitor’s center when Morgan had an idea. “Hold up for a sec,” she said. Tony stopped and turned towards her. “I’m going to turn my shirt inside out to see if that helps reduce the gore a bit.”</p><p>“Good thinking,”  he said as he turned around. Morgan pulled off her shirt and quickly turned it out and put it back on. She looked down at herself.</p><p>“Wow. That did not help at all,” she remarked. Tony turned around to look.</p><p>“It’s not worse. It could be a lot worse,” he said. The inside was actually worse than the outside. At least there was dirt partially disguising the blood on the outside. There was no such disguise on the inside.</p><p>“I’m going to need to flip it back,” she sighed. Maybe she’d just say she took a bit of a fall. It was factually correct, after all.</p><p>***</p><p>Morgan walked into the concrete visitor’s center, trying to look as normal as possible as she scanned for the help desk. It took her less than a minute to spot it among the displays of the park’s geology and natural features. She beelined directly towards it.</p><p>It was manned by what looked like a college student, school pullover visible from under their park branded jacket. Morgan stopped in front of the desk and gave him a bright smile.</p><p>“Hi! Is there a phone I could use anywhere around here?” The man looked at her, his eyes wide. He looked totally out of his element, and a bit surprised at being addressed.</p><p>Morgan could tell the second he registered the blood. “Uh, yeah. Are you alright?” He licked his lips nervously.</p><p>“Yeah, just took a bit of a fall. I’m fine though, just need to make a few calls home.”</p><p>“Uh, right.” He got up and gestured for her to follow him. He led Morgan to a booth in the back of the building marked ‘Emergency’ in bold red letters. “This isn’t really an emergency phone, you can just call whoever you need to from here.”</p><p>“Thank you so much.” Morgan smiled once more at him as he returned to the front of the center. She turned to Tony. “He probably won’t say anything, right?”</p><p>“I’m sure he will, but you’ll be gone by the time it matters. You calling Pepper or the wizard first?”</p><p>“Mom. She probably won’t pick up, but I do want to leave a message for her.” She turned towards the booth, carefully recalling both her mother’s personal number, and the number she had been given for Stephen Strange, in case of emergencies. It made sense really, using the emergency phone to call in an emergency. She snickered under her breath. Tony raised his eyebrow at her.</p><p>“Want to share?” He said. She told him. “Nice.” He grinned a little.</p><p>Morgan turned back to the phone. The keypad was old, and worn. She could hardly make out the numbers on the old phone, but squinted at it a bit harder to make them out. She picked up the receiver and held it to her ear and quickly typed in one of the numbers she knew by heart. Morgan lost phones a lot. It wasn’t that she wasn't careful with them, but they always seemed to just wander off on their own and disappear forever. It was kind of necessary for her to know a range of phone numbers by heart. She’d be utterly lost otherwise. Luckily her mom’s number and Strange’s numbers were both ones she knew.</p><p>The dial tone sounded. There was a click, and Pepper’s answering message played. “This is Pepper Potts-Stark, and I can’t pick up your call right now. This is my personal number, so if that isn’t the number you thought you were calling, please try to call again. If this is the number you were trying to reach, please leave a message and I’ll call you back.” Another tone sounded.</p><p>“Hey Mom, it’s Morgan. My plans in Denali got derailed a little bit, and some weird stuff is going on. It’s nothing to worry about, I promise. I’m going to call Dr.Strange to come get me, so if you want to call me, I’ll be with him. Love you!” Morgan hung up.</p><p>“You don’t want to tell her that you got kidnapped? Or anything else?” Tony asked.</p><p>Morgan shook her head. “She’d just worry, and she doesn’t need to. I’m sure Strange will know what’s going on, and everything will be fine.” Tony muttered something under his breath which she couldn't hear, but Morgan decided to ignore that in favour of calling Doctor Strange.</p><p>She picked up the receiver again, and dialed the number. It rang for about a minute before someone picked up.</p><p>“Hello?” Said a very confused voice, which was definitely Stephen Strange.</p><p>“It’s Morgan Stark.” There was a pause.</p><p>“Why are you calling me?”</p><p>“There’s some weird magicy stuff going on, and I need you to come pick me up.”</p><p>“You do realize I’m not a taxi service,” he sighed, “Where are you?”</p><p>“I’m in the Eielson Visitor’s Center in Denali National Park.”</p><p>“Fine.” He hung up without saying goodbye. She looked down at the receiver in some amount of surprise before putting it down and looking at Tony.</p><p>“That went well, I think.”</p><p>“That man has not changed at all since I met him,” he said. Morgan snorted at that.</p><p>They stood around for a few minutes, waiting for Strange to appear. Morgan was very hungry by this point, and considered going to see if the visitor’s center had any food for sale, before remembering that she didn’t have any money on her, as all her emergency cash had been in her backpack. She sighed, resigned to be hungry for just a little while longer.</p><p>Morgan turned to ask her father how much longer he thought the Doctor would be, when a glowing circle appeared next to her. Standing inside the portal was Dr.Strange himself, blue robes and red cape.</p><p>“Hi!” Morgan said cheerfully.</p><p>“Hello,” said the man in return, obviously unsettled by the amount of dried blood on her clothes. Morgan smiled widely at him.</p>
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<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>So, it didn't hit me until after I finished writing, but the original characters from Marvel are all old now. The Reaper is 13 years after Endgame, so a character like Strange is definitely in his sixties at least.</p><p>Just pretend this is a Marvel movie, and that they just went on and filmed the movie with the actor looking no different than usual.</p><p>Anyway, I haven't seen Endgame in it's entirety yet, so just ignore any characterization issues you find.</p><p>Please enjoy, and see you next week.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The shock had set in. There was no other reason Morgan could possibly be this calm as she slurped her nice, warm bowl of soup in an office sitting across a table from Doctor Strange. Morgan of course was unaware of this, as she was indeed in shock. Tony and Strange were both looking at her like she was insane. Separately of course, as it was clear Tony could not be seen by Strange.</p><p>She looked a sight, covered in blood and drinking soup, all the while having a very stupid grin on her face and refusing to drop eye contact with the doctor as she slurped her soup increasingly loudly. Morgan was just happy she wasn't so hungry anymore. By all accounts her behavior was excusable, an empty stomach will do weird things to the brain. But it was all very awkward.</p><p>The only sounds in the room were Morgan’s slurping and Strange’s breathing. Tony just sat there, watching the staring contest. He would have broken the silence to express his approval of Morgan’s campaign to annoy the sorcerer, but the mood wasn’t right. Also, he didn’t want to disturb her, very much aware that she could snap out of her unnatural calm at any moment, and that wouldn’t be pretty.</p><p>They sat in silence for another few moments, and Morgan finished her soup, with a greatly over-exaggerated slurp. She places the bowl in her lap and wraps her hands around it to take advantage of the residual heat left behind. “Can I have more?” She asks.</p><p>Strange sighs and put his head in his hands. “I thought you called me for a reason.”</p><p>“I did. I’m just hungry.” She looked fairly pleased with winning the staring contest.</p><p>He rubbed his eyes and sat back up. “Tell me about why you called and answer my questions and we’ll get you some more food.”</p><p>“Hmm,” she grinned at him, “Deal.”</p><p>Strange looked like he already regretted opening his mouth.</p><p>“So,” she began, “I was on a hiking trip in Denali, and on the second night in I got kidnapped by some mostly incompetent idiots who didn’t tie me up properly, but they knocked me out and they had guns, so I guess they were a little effective. But I figured out how to escape and when I did, they saw and shot at me so I fell off a cliff.”</p><p>“You fell off a cliff.”</p><p>“Oh yeah. That’s not even the weird part though.”</p><p>Strange looked like he was struggling. “Let me go get Wong. If you falling off the cliff isn’t the weird part I need some backup.”</p><p>Strange got up and walked out of the office. Morgan looked over at Tony, grinning like a lunatic. Tony grinned back. “Harry Potter’s having a crisis”, he said, “And you are being far too cavalier about this.”</p><p>She shrugged. “I’ll just have a breakdown if I think too hard about it now,” she continued, “I hope he brings more food back with him.” Tony shook his head at her in fond exasperation.</p><p>“Just go easy on him, sweetheart, he can’t help us figure out what’s going on if he dies of frustration.” She stuck her tongue out at him, like an adult.</p><p>It was right then Strange walked back in, accompanied by Wong. They looked at her weirdly, because to them, she was sticking out her tongue at thin air. She turned back to the desk as Strange settled behind it. Wong sat in a second chair partially around the side of the desk, turning what was before a two (three) way conversation into a three (four) way conversation. (At least to one of them. Morgan was still the only one who knew about the last member of the conversation.)</p><p>“If you would start over again please?” Strange asked, looking over at Wong out of the corner of his eye.</p><p>“Sure,” Morgan said, “So I got kidnapped a few days into a camping trip up in Denali, and they did a mediocre job, because I escaped.”</p><p>“You didn’t actually escape,” Tony interjected.</p><p>“Fine, I didn't actually escape,” Strange and Wong gave each other a look picking up on her apparent response to nothing, “I got shot and fell down a cliff. I got pretty hurt as you could probably tell,” she gestured down to her blood-crusted clothes, “And I got knocked out.”</p><p>“You look fine other than the old blood,” said Wong.</p><p>“Oh yeah, I know, that’s part of the weird part,” Morgan said, “When I woke up I was completely healed. And… well, stuff happened.”</p><p>“What sort of stuff?” Strange asked this time.</p><p>“Well, I had some really peculiar dreams while I was knocked out, and when I woke up I could see him.” She pointed to Tony. Tony sat there, staring at Strange and Wong.</p><p>“And who’s him?” Strange asked.</p><p>“My dad.” The two sorcerers looked at each other, as if trying to decide if it was the shock talking. “Quick Dad, what’s something only you would know?”</p><p>“The first time we met, he brought Banner with him to prove he was the real deal. He interrupted me and your mother when we were having a conversation.”</p><p>She repeated what he said to the other two. “Anyway, I didn’t know what was going on and I thought you could probably help me.”</p><p>Strange put his head in his hands and groaned. He got up from his seat and pulled Wong outside the room. They started whispering rather loudly, seemingly convinced that she couldn’t hear them. She said as much to Tony, getting a sharp grin before they both listened in on the conversation.</p><p>“How do we tell if she’s telling the truth?” That was definitely Wong.</p><p>“Can we afford to ignore this if she is? This could be some sort of forewarning of an oncoming emergency.” That was Strange.</p><p>“It seems unlikely. She’s in shock.” Morgan snickered, looking at Tony. Unlikely indeed.</p><p>“Maybe so, but she could still be telling the truth.”</p><p>Wong sighed. “I guess this is you telling me to go off and look through the library for anything similar to this?”</p><p>“I’ll do some scans and see if I can find anything.” Morgan then heard one pair of footsteps leave off down the hallway, as Strange returned to the office. He sat down behind the desk and stared at her for a moment. The man sighed,  seemingly reluctant to start the conversation again. He waved his hand in the direction of her bowl. She grinned in delight as it refilled with the soup, and she returned to slurping it again, only slightly quieter this time.</p><p>Strange looked utterly defeated. “I have some questions, if you don’t mind, then I’d like to run some tests.”</p><p>“Sure,” she nodded as well.</p><p>“Alright, do you know how long you were out for?”</p><p>“No idea. It was day when I fell and night when I woke up, and that’s all I know.”</p><p>He wrote something down on a piece of paper, probably recording her answers. “When did you notice… Tony was there?” He sounded slightly skeptical.</p><p>“A few minutes after I woke up probably. I thought I was dead for a bit, and everything hurt, so I don’t <em>really</em> know.”</p><p>“It took about fifteen minutes for you to notice me. I didn’t know you could see me yet so I didn't try to get your attention,” Tony said. Morgan reported the number to Strange. He looked over at the space she had turned to which was occupied by Tony, whom he couldn’t see.</p><p>“Right. You mentioned that everything hurt. What do you mean?”</p><p>Morgan could tell he thought it was her wounds. “My chest hurt a lot. It felt like someone had scooped out the middle and there was a giant hole. There wasn’t of course. It started feeling that way during my dreams.”</p><p>“Uh huh. How long into your trip were you kidnapped, and how long did they have you?” He jotted down a short note.</p><p>“I was kidnapped on the second night in, and they had me for about ten hours if I judged the time correctly.”</p><p>“When did you set out on your trip?”</p><p>“July 10th.” At that Strange stopped and looked up at her.</p><p>“July 10th? And you remember three days?”</p><p>“Four actually, it took awhile to get to the visitor’s center so I could call you. But yeah, that’s right. Why?”</p><p>He looked up at the ceiling, and closed his eyes. “It’s the 25th of July.”</p><p>She stared at him. Tony stared at him. Strange stared at the ceiling. “What?” Morgan said. “What does that mean?”</p><p>“I don’t know,’ he said, “I’m going to run some scans on you, to see if I can find anything else, then I’ll make sure you get to bed. I’m sure it’s been a long day.”</p><p>Morgan felt like she had whiplash from how fast he had seemed to change subjects, but he had a look of concern on his face so she nodded. She did feel really tired. The soup had made her kind of sleepy, and she had been awake for more than twenty hours by now, and her previous two rests had been her unconscious, not actually sleeping. It had almost caught up to her. She was still mostly awake. Mostly.</p><p>She sat there as Strange cast weird gold patterns in the air around her noting down things he observed from his spell. As he worked, Morgan was a little distracted by the pretty patterns. She could see Tony out of the corner of her eye as he watched Strange work. He was trying to get a feel for what the doctor was doing, and a look of concern was etched into his face as he watched both of them carefully.</p><p>Morgan was a little caught up in the fact she may have missed two whole weeks somehow, but pushed the thought off to the side. There must be a reasonable explanation, or at least a semi-reasonable explanation. She’d cut the explanation gods some slack. This was all a little unreasonable. They must be working overtime.</p>
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<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This chapter was edited in a bit of a rush, so there's a higher chance of mistakes.</p><p>This one is also a bit transitional, and the character dynamics aren't quite hammered out yet. Please forgive any OOCness.</p><p>Also please review, and see you next week!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Strange led Morgan up several flights of stairs and through countless hallways to a small bedroom. “There’s a computer on the desk, if you need to contact anyone,” he told her. She thanked him, and he left back the way they came, presumably off to tell Wong what his findings had shown.</p><p>Morgan pulled at her itchy clothing and went to sit at the desk. She didn’t want to get the bed bloody. She turned around to see that Tony’s ghost had settled on the bed, and yawned, her jaw popping. “Do you think I really missed two whole weeks somehow?” She asked him, settling into the chair.</p><p>“The facts don't lie, and unless you’re missing a lot of days somewhere else, I think that’s the only thing that could have happened.”</p><p>“But why?”</p><p>Tony leaned back against the wall, and she noticed that he didn’t make an indent in the quilt. He thought for a moment. “Maybe something happened and you were frozen for a bit, like the super popsicles?”</p><p>“It’s summer though. There’s no way it was cold enough to freeze me.”</p><p>He looked at her carefully, squinting as if he was looking at something that wasn’t quite there. “It’s a bit of a stretch, but what if you died?”</p><p>“Why would you think that?” She asked, confused. He had been the one who insisted she was alive back in the clearing, why did he think she was dead now? “Why did you say I was alive before, if you think that?”</p><p>“Because you <em>are</em> alive,” he said, leaning forward, looking as though he wanted to get up and pace, “You have some of the qualities of a soul that’s passed on, but you are also clearly alive, It’s like you’re both dead and alive at the same time.”</p><p>Morgan put her head in her hands. She really didn’t want to think about if she was dead or not right now. She was far too tired to process what exactly had happened to her. Morgan could feel a wave of panic start to wash over her. She took a few deep breaths to calm herself slightly.</p><p>Tony looked at her in concern and looked like he was about to say something when she said, “I-- maybe. Can we talk about something else right now please?”</p><p>“Yeah, sure. Are you ok telling me what happened when you were kidnapped?”</p><p>Morgan laughed internally. What a horrible turn of events where a kidnapping was the easier option to discuss. She nodded. “A bunch of people in tactical gear found me on my second night in, after I had deviated from my planned course. They were driving one of the tour busses from the park. There were maybe about fifteen of them?”</p><p>“You left your planned course?”</p><p>“I had reservations at campgrounds for the first three nights, and they were all about a day apart from each other. I got sick on the first night, and slept late the next day. It was too late to make it to the second campsite by the time I left, but I thought I could make it to the third one in time for the reservation there. I slept past the treeline off the road on the second night-- or I tried. They grabbed me a few hours after sunset.”</p><p>“So they knew where you were, and were presumably following you.”</p><p>“Something like that. Nobody but family knew I was taking this trip though. I don’t know how they could have followed me. They tried very hard not to kill me though, I think me getting shot wasn’t in their plan.”</p><p>“Motivated by ransom then, most likely. Was there anything notable about any of them?”</p><p>“All of them had red eyes. And they ran too fast to be normal humans, and found me far quicker than I expected when I tried to run.”</p><p>“Enhanced, then?” Tony asked.</p><p>She looked at him sarcastically, “You think?” They sat in silence for a few minutes. “I should probably contact FRIDAY.”</p><p>“That is a wonderful idea. We should have done that first. She’ll be able to figure out what’s going on better than we can.” Tony mused.</p><p>That wasn’t why Morgan wanted to contact FRIDAY, by the way. She just really missed the AI and regretted not bringing her with on her trip. But Tony’s idea held merit and was probably the most productive use of their time, so the first thing she did when she booted up the old laptop was connect to FRIDAY. Which was no easy task, needing passwords and identity verifications, and a secure wifi connection (Which Tony needed to coach her through. A software engineer she was not).</p><p>Eventually she got the computer hooked up to FRIDAY’s servers. Hardly a moment had passed before the AI’s voice echoed out of the speakers. “Morgan? Why are you in Kathmandu, Nepal? Aren’t you supposed to be in Alaska?”</p><p>“I am indeed supposed to be in Alaska right now.”</p><p>The AI sighed, sound crackling in the speakers in a way quite different than her usual soft tones. “What happened?”</p><p>“I may have gotten kidnapped while I was on my trip and I might have somehow obtained the ability to see my dad.”</p><p>“Boss is dead, Mini Boss.”</p><p>“Yeah, I know,” Morgan said, trying to come up with a way to convince FRIDAY she was telling the truth.</p><p>It was unnecessary. “That’s very interesting. I’ve never heard of anything like that before.”</p><p>“You believe me?”</p><p>“You have no reason to lie to me.” Morgan looked at Tony, who was grinning fondly at the computer. Morgan also began to grin, overjoyed that someone believed her, without needing proof.</p><p>She turned back to the computer and began searching for red-eyed people, with FRIDAY pulling up relevant results. She spoke to the AI while they worked, catching her up on everything that had happened, including the fact she had missed two weeks. She could see Tony watching her work out of the corner of her eye, a proud smile on his face.</p><p>After about ten minutes she started to yawn widely, her exhaustion finally catching up to her. “Why don’t you go to sleep Morgan, and I can continue searching?” FRIDAY suggested. Morgan nodded in agreement, then realized that FRIDAY couldn't see her, because the computer had no camera.</p><p>“Yeah, I will. Thanks Fri,” she said, and turned away from the computer. Morgan turned to Tony. She started thinking about how she had possibly died again, and could feel the ocean of panic waiting for her. She took a moment to clear her head, and in the process had an idea. “What if I can see you because I’ve died?” She addressed Tony.</p><p>He considered the idea for a moment. “That’s fair, I suppose. But what brought you <em>back</em> to life?”</p><p>She huffed in frustration, not at Tony, but at the idea that she didn’t know what was happening. It didn’t feel very good, to not know. She was so used to being on top of everything; school, family, friends, work. Morgan hated when situations were out of her control. She always felt like she needed to pretend to know what was going on, and that was so exhausting.</p><p>It was simpler to just ignore the problem. So Morgan decided right then and there, to ignore the issue until it went away. It would drive her crazy to linger on what had happened. It was better to move on, right?</p>
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<a name="section0009"><h2>9. A Strange Interlude</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hello! There was no chapter last week because I really didn't want to edit this one! There is a higher chance of mistakes in this one because of that! I now understand the danger of just not posting.</p>
<p>Anyway. This is the first of two chapters from Strange's perspective, which are very nearly the only times we leave Morgan alone.</p>
<p>The plot thickens to the consistency of pancake batter.</p>
<p>Please review, give kudos, and I'll see you next week (hopefully).</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Doctor Strange and Wong sat across a table from each other, making uneasy eye contact as they both waited for the other to speak.</p>
<p>Wong broke first. “I didn’t find any mentions of any sort of similar situation, but I do need to look through the libraries in the other Sanctums.”</p>
<p>“That was fast,” Strange remarked, looking around at the massive library.</p>
<p>Wong looked a bit guilty. “I looked through the catalogue for any mentions of seeing the dead. Necromancy and visitation dreams. Nothing substantial, or factual.”</p>
<p>Strange sighed. “You won’t like the news I have then. There is some sort of otherworldly disturbance around her, which could very well be Stark. The tests I ran showed a few other things as well, but that’s not really the pressing concern I have.”</p>
<p>“What’s the concern then?”</p>
<p>“Morgan is missing about two weeks.” Wong looked confused. “She was kidnapped two days into her trip, fell off the cliff another day later, but over two weeks have passed since she set off on her trip.”</p>
<p>Wong’s face was blank. He blinked a few times, very slowly. “What do you think happened?”</p>
<p>“I think she must have died. Or hit her head very hard, but it’s not typical for a patient to lose several weeks of memory through severe head trauma, and not report other effects. In this case, dying is actually more plausible.”</p>
<p>“That can’t be the only reason you think that.”</p>
<p>Strange changed positions in his chair, as if he was preparing to settle in for a long time. “Her energy has changed significantly.”</p>
<p>“How so?”</p>
<p>“She’s more powerful, more so than she’s ever been before; and it flows differently. It originates from an external source in her chest, not from where magic is typically centered. It feels quite like Wanda Maximoff’s powers in a way.”</p>
<p>“That’s a very dangerous thing.”</p>
<p>“If used incorrectly.” With that, Strange got up and began pacing the length of the library. Wong turned around fully in his chair to watch the other man. “I don’t think she even knows what’s going on, she shows no signs of being aware of it. I wish she was able to use them, it would be so much easier to gauge what’s happening if she were to actively use them.”</p>
<p>“We could suggest that she join the students in a training session tomorrow, and observe her then.”</p>
<p>Strange nodded slowly. “That could work.” He returned to his pacing, this time looking at the books, trying to find something.</p>
<p>“Now, how are you suggesting she came back to life? Genuine necromancy is impossible.”</p>
<p>Strange seemed to find what he was looking for, and didn't answer Wong immediately. Instead, he undid the locks holding an enormous volume on the shelf and levitated it over to the table, the Cloak of Levitation attempting to assist by partially carrying the tome. The man and sentient object dropped it on the table with some amount of care, sending up a cloud of dusk and shaking the entire table. Wong turned back to face him.</p>
<p>Strange was now using magic to flip through the pages, looking for something in particular. Wong started to ask his question again, but the taller man held up his hand for him to wait. Strange continued to flip through the book, until he came to rest on a page that held an illustration of the six infinity stones. Wong once again tried to speak.</p>
<p>Strange spoke over him. “Her powers feel a great deal like Ms.Maximoff’s, and also feel like the time stone’s energy. It’s my theory that the soul stone has somehow exercised its powers on Morgan, and brought her back to life. Such an occurrence would explain both the fact that she can see her dead father, and the change in her internal power.”</p>
<p>Wong sighed. “You have no basis for that theory. There’s never been a case of the soul stone influencing mortals with its power the way the other stones have been wont to do. There’s nothing in the records that support it.”</p>
<p>“Are you saying that with absolute certainty? Do you definitively know that there has never been a case like this?” Said Strange.</p>
<p>Wong groaned. “I guess I know what we’re doing tonight,” he sighed, “I think I hate you.” Strange rolled his eyes.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>The sun had set by the time Strange had let Wong take a break. The man was utterly convinced he was right, and by the looks of the literature they had discovered in a chest in the backroom of the reference section of the London Sanctum, his theory was fairly accurate. Or at least it was in theory.</p>
<p>Which Wong felt was extremely unfortunate, partially because it seemed rather dangerous for the girl, but also because it would make Strange even more stuck up than he already was.</p>
<p>They had searched for hours, just the two of them, and had only come by the relevant books by chance. Strange had stumbled over some volumes that he had neglected to return to their shelves and hit his head on the chest they found the books in.</p>
<p>The books themselves were fairly worn, not by use, but by time. It was clear to the two of them that no one had touched the books themselves in hundreds of years, possibly not since they had been written. The chest had been sealed and it had taken another hour of trying different spells to unseal it before they could get at the books inside. Strange had been rather persistent about opening it. He had had a <em>feeling</em>.</p>
<p>The books really were the find of a lifetime, and after a cursory look at the first few pages, it was clear why they had been shut away so securely.</p>
<p>There were six volumes, written by Agamotto himself, detailing the powers of each stone, and the effects they would have on a mortal, if a mortal were to come into contact with its powers.</p>
<p>What really cinched the deal though, and what made Wong a firm believer in the theory, were how close the descriptions were to the few who had powers from the stones. The mind stone was said to give the powers that one most dearly wished for. The space stone gave one powers of energy manipulation in a few forms. They were both descriptions familiar to the men.</p>
<p>The unsettling bit was what was said about the soul stone.</p>
<p>
  <em>The soul stone does not give out its powers like the other stones will, nor will it allow itself to be under the control of another for long. But it will choose one whom it wishes to gift powers to, and will bond with that being. It does not give powers, but rather lends itself to the furthering of another's goals, as long as it approves.</em>
</p>
<p>Neither of them had quite known what to make of that passage, until Strange recalled what he had found before. An independent power source, outside Morgan’s natural energy. “She has the Soul Stone lodged in her chest,” he said with some amount of finality. Wong couldn’t refute him that time, only putting his head in his hands and sighing deeply. They sat there, in silence, until the air felt thicker than syrup because of the tension.</p>
<p>That wasn’t all though.</p>
<p>
  <em>One who shares the Souls Stone’s power will be essentially immortal. Killing them will be possible, but they will reawaken and seek their vengeance for their death, almost unconsciously. As soon as they have the chance they will respond in kind, bringing death to their killer.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>They will also be able to contact departed souls, gaining the ability to summon the dead. They will increase in power, able to draw on the reservoir that the Soul Stone itself draws on.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Other abilities may be possible. I have never encountered such a person, and do not know personally if such a thing will ever occur.</em>
</p>
<p>The abilities, for once, were not what the two sorcerers were thinking about. They were thinking about the bit on immortality and vengeance. Neither shared their thoughts with the other, but they had to be both thinking the same thing. That Morgan Stark was now more dangerous than she was ever going to be, and that something needed to be done about it.</p>
<p>That was what Wong was thinking. Strange was questioning the legitimacy of the document. He had been so sure before, but the lack of empirical proof in the book made him question himself. But better safe than sorry.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>A little while later, still in shock at their discovery, found Strange and Wong sitting back at the table in the Kamar-Taj library; the same place where many hours previous, they had been a little more ignorant, and a little more secure in their safety.</p>
<p>“I don’t think we should tell her about what we found,” said Wong. Strange looked at him like he was crazy, but the man continued, “If the Stone is playing a role in how she’s thinking, it might lash out against us if it knows we know it’s there. Or it might hurt Morgan.” Strange still looked unconvinced. “We should at least train her before we tell her then. It will be better if she can get a hold on these powers before she knows they're not actually part of her.”</p>
<p>Strange rubbed his beard in thought. “We do need to tell her at some point soon though. I have a feeling that she’s not the sort of person who takes matters like this lightly. She doesn’t like being lied to.”</p>
<p>“It’s not lying.” Wong got up and began to flip through the Soul Stone book again, pausing on the pages that they had found so concerning before. “You’ll have to gauge her level of natural ability first, before you begin to train her. Who knows how much knowledge she’ll pick up from the Stone.”</p>
<p>“Me?” Asked Strange, “Why not you, are someone else?”</p>
<p>“You had experience with the Time Stone, if anything goes wrong you have the highest chance of being able to do something about it.”</p>
<p>Strange scowled. “You just don’t want to get close to her.”</p>
<p>“Maybe so,” Wong replied, “But my point still stands, if something goes wrong, you will need to stop it.”</p>
<p>“Fine,” he said, “But she’ll need to start training in the morning with the rest of the students.” Wong conceded, and continued flipping through the aged tome in front of him. Strange watched him with a slightly annoyed look on his face.</p>
<p>Wong’s expression changed when he saw one of the pages, and he stopped on it.</p>
<p>Illustrated was a large picture of a woman, cloaked in darkness, with her skull visible beneath her facial features. She held a scythe in one hand, and a decapitated head in the other. Behind her was a stylized picture of the Soul Stone, in all of it’s glowing glory. The entire picture had an air of menace to it, and seemed threatening to the observers.</p>
<p>Below it was a short section of text that read:</p>
<p>
  <em>The Soul Stone’s greatest enemy is Death. She will do anything to ensure all who enter her realm stay there, and the Soul Stone’s bond with a mortal will contradict that. It will bring a soul back to life forever, and tempt departed souls out of Death’s arms continually.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>The person whom the Stone chooses will be in danger from Death at every turn, but not in the way one is generally in danger from Death.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Death will stop at nothing to ensure all souls she perceive to belong to her will remain with her, or at least within her rules.</em>
</p>
<p>As soon as he read the last word, Wong slammed the book shut and looked at Strange, who had been reading over his shoulder. They stared at each other, both breathing heavily like they had just ran a race. The air felt thinner than it had a moment ago, like the book had sucked all the light out of the room (despite there already being very little that time of night). Strange made a face like he had just bit into a lemon.</p>
<p>“I’ll address that with her when we talk about the rest of what we found in the book,” he said, “There’s no reason to worry her about that right now.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Chapter 10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hello!</p>
<p>This weeks chapter comes with a trigger warning in the form of a rather graphic description of a panic attack. If you find that triggering, or just don't want to read it, there's nothing significant to the plot in that section. Just skip to the section that's in italics to get past the panic attack section.</p>
<p>Happy reading, please enjoy and review!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Morgan and Tony still sat in roughly the same positions, Tony on the bed, and Morgan at the desk. Tony was looking at Morgan, utterly concerned for her, but not saying anything. It had been him that sent her into the spiral she was currently in, and he didn’t want to say anything that would make it any worse.</p>
<p>He had mentioned the dying part of the day’s events, and apparently that was something that should not be mentioned again. She was looking up at the ceiling blankly, breathing so infrequently that he felt the need to check her heart rate.</p>
<p>She moved before he could, breathing deeply all of a sudden, and she got up. “I need to sleep,” she said, “I’m too tired to deal with all of this.”</p>
<p>Tony nodded, and also got up. “I’m going to go look for any leads, ok?” She watched him as he moved across the room, to where the computer was. “FRIDAY says that a bus was reported missing in the park a few weeks ago,” he continued as he examined the screen, “I’ll go check it out.” He looked at her face one final time before he left. “I’m sure everything will be fine, sweetheart.”</p>
<p>Morgan nodded and waved goodbye to Tony as he disappeared.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Morgan stripped out of her bloody clothes almost mechanically, dropping them on the floor next the bed in a heap. Her undergarments were mostly clean, surprisingly enough, and she would be warm enough. She’d ask if she could wash her clothes in the morning.</p>
<p>She toggled off the computer screen, leaving the room significantly darker than it had been before.</p>
<p>She knew that Dad had meant well by saying everything would be fine, but it couldn’t be fine! She had died! And been brought back to life, but she wasn’t counting, now was she.</p>
<p>Morgan switched off the lights, leaving the room pitch black. She felt very alone, unable to see the computer screen to reassure herself that FRIDAY was there, and Tony was gone for now.</p>
<p>The empty feeling in her chest came back in force all of a sudden. She felt like her heart had moved to occupy her throat and she could barely inhale, her lungs forcing out all the air she had left. Morgan curled up on the bed as tears started rushing down her face and a pressure in her head joined the one in her chest.</p>
<p>She knew on some level she was probably only reacting like this because of how long she had been awake, but she also felt so out of control. Nothing was her choice here. She didn’t decide to come back to life, she didn’t decide to see her father again. She knew the other shoe would fall at some point, and he would have to go away again. Five-year-old Morgan was screaming inside her, throwing a tantrum of epic proportions.</p>
<p>Eighteen-year-old Morgan was getting lightheaded from the lack of oxygen, yet still couldn’t force herself to draw breath. She felt the urge to lash out and hit something, but her hazy thoughts reminded her that punching the wall would result in broken fingers. She dug into her palms with her fingernails instead, the sharp pain lessening the urge to hit.</p>
<p>Morgan’s chin hit her chest as she nearly blacked out. She caught herself, and the sharp head movement seemed to loosen her lungs slightly. She pulled in lungfuls of air, desperate to breath past the pain in her chest.</p>
<p>It felt like she was being crushed to death, little by little.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>The girl’s eyes were slivers, her irises not visible behind her eyelids. As her panic continued to grow, an orange glow shone out from under them, as her eyes flickered with light.</p>
<p>She once again stared at the ceiling, the orange irises fully visible. They pulsed with power, looking for all the world like they had when she had risen from the dead.</p>
<p>They pulsed one final time before turning back to brown, as they had before in the previously mentioned situation, in much the same manner. Her sobs cut off at the same time, and her breathing evened out completely.</p>
<p>The girl laid there in the bed for a while, just breathing. She climbed under the covers eventually and fell asleep. The falling asleep was a bit more like blacking out, but at that point she had been awake going on almost 36 hours. The only person who had been with her had been one who didn’t need rest, and the others she had seen had forgotten the time change she had experienced.</p>
<p>And before that, she had slept the fitful rest of a corpse, which wasn’t exactly restful. If she had been awake to process thought, the girl would have remarked on how she hadn’t collapsed where she stood at any point previously.</p>
<p>She hadn’t rested well at all in a while. And she wouldn’t still for some time, unfortunately.</p>
<p>The girl began to toss and turn, and cry out, just a few minutes after her eyes fell shut.</p>
<p>No, she wouldn’t be resting for at least a little while.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>
  <em>Morgan ran through the forest she had been captured in on the night of her kidnapping. She knew in the back of her mind it wasn’t the kidnappers that were chasing her, but something else entirely.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>She ran, fearing what was following, and employing the same tricks that didn’t work when she had tried to evade the kidnappers before. Hiding behind trees and the like.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>The pursuer called out to her, and Morgan recognized the voice from the orange plains in her dream while she was dead, and when she climbed the floating stairs. She ran a bit faster, convinced that the voice was the one who had made the stairs disappear out from under her.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>She had never heard the voice anywhere else, that Morgan was completely sure of. It sounded a little like her mother, and a little like her Aunt Nebula. The two of them sounded nothing alike in real life, so she ran a little faster, scared of a thing that took people she loved and appropriated their voices.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>The footsteps were gaining on her, just as they had in real life. She hid behind a tree once again, seeing no other option. She didn’t want to face whatever was chasing her.</em>
</p>
<p><em>Just as the pursuer was about to round the tree, Morgan heard a </em>snap!<em> and the scenery around her shifted to the orange plain.</em></p>
<p>
  <em>It was quiet there now, no voice calling out to her. Just a soft wind, blowing her clothes around her. She was back in her hiking clothes, without the bloodstains. It felt nice and a little relaxing. Now that she looked a bit closer at the landscape, it was less of a plain and more cratered landscape. It didn’t look like anything on Earth. The scale was too large. It looked a bit like the surface of Mars, orange and pockmarked. Plus some orange grass. Mars didn’t have that.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Morgan was happy that her very specific obsession with Mars as a child was paying off somehow. She longed to take a picture of the landscape, and mourned the loss of the camera gear she had brought to Denali with her for a moment.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Her limbs ached from the run she had been doing just a moment previously, and she sat down, facing the way the stairs had appeared before.</em>
</p>
<p><em>She felt relaxed, light, free. It was a long and happy few minutes before the ache in her chest returned. </em>I might as well get used to it,<em> she thought, and took some deep breaths, trying to ignore it. It stayed mostly painless, and didn't restrict her breathing in the slightest. In fact, when she had decided to tolerate it, the ache had lessened, as if it was pleased with her.</em></p>
<p>
  <em>Morgan tilted her head back and looked up at the sky. It was clear. There was a moon in it, the same size as Earth’s moon, full as can be. It shone like it had the night she had awoken from death… which it hadn’t the night she had died. It had been a new moon the night she had died.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>She really had missed two weeks. Somehow this didn’t phase her much, and she continued breathing calmly.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>The pain grew even smaller, and Morgan could feel where it originated from. A small walnut sized spot at the top of her sternum. It wasn’t offensive, the thing. It felt warm, and pushed a feeling of warmth throughout her body. It added to the relaxation she felt, despite the fact that the spot still felt like it was hollow and had been carved out. It just felt normal, like she had lived with it there every day of her life.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>She could feel her heart beat in time with the thing’s pulsing, and her veins filled with quiet energy that radiated out from the top of her sternum. Her eyes turned orange to match the landscape, and began to droop slightly.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Morgan laid back, feeling like she could fall asleep right there. Her breathing slowed even further, and she closed her eyes, falling immediately into full sleep. The soft wind blew her hair around her face in a sort of cocoon, and the orange grass danced with it.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>The rolling hills looked like they were alive under the wind's hand, and the moon shone brightly down on the partially dark landscape. The air wasn’t warm or cold, but it was slightly humid, not dry. Never dry air. It was Morgan’s best idea of a peaceful place.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>She slept on, and all was well on the orange plains. All was well in Morgan’s dream world, and all would be well when she awoke.</em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Chapter 11</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This chapter isn't so interesting, but it's set up for the next one. It'll be worth the wait, I promise.</p>
<p>Read and review, and see you next week!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Morgan’s eyes snapped open. Golden light streamed through the window, illuminating the dust on the computer screen. She felt well-rested, but also incredibly sore. She felt like she could hardly move because of how tight her muscles were.</p>
<p>Tony wasn’t there, so he must still be on his reconnaissance trip. Not seeing anything that would have woken her up, she turned over and buried her head into her pillow.</p>
<p>A light knocking caught her attention. Someone was outside the door. Morgan slowly got out of the bed and stretched, not rushing. She began to walk towards the door and nearly tripped on a pile of fabric.</p>
<p><em>Her clothes.</em> She had forgotten she was just in her undershirt, and had also forgotten to ask if she could wash the bloody articles. She continued her way over to the door, and only opened it slightly, poking her head out into the hallway.</p>
<p>There stood Doctor Strange, looking very strange indeed holding a stack of neatly folded fabric, with heavy bags under his eyes, as if he had been up all night. “Good morning,” he grumbled slightly, “I have some new clothes for you.” He held out the stack, and she reached out of the crack between the door and door frame to grab them.</p>
<p>She held them close to her body. “Thanks, and is there anywhere I can wash my other clothes out?”</p>
<p>“You can try in a bathtub,” he said, “but don’t count on being able to salvage them. Blood is hard to get out of clothes.”</p>
<p>She grinned. “That’s awfully suspicious information for you to know Doc.”</p>
<p>“You did just call me doctor, I think that’s all the credentials I need here,” he laughed, “The bathroom is two doors down that way on the right,” he pointed, “and when you’re finished getting ready, I have some breakfast in one of the main rooms that way,” he pointed in the other direction. “Take as long as you need, there’s no hurry.”</p>
<p>“Thank you.” He nodded at her and left in the direction he had indicated for breakfast. Morgan pulled the door closed.</p>
<p>She really needed to go wash before she got dressed. She didn’t smell very good from all the hiking, before and after the kidnapping, and she still had dried blood on her. Ick.</p>
<p>Steeling herself, she put her bloody clothes back on, and ventured back out into the hall, all the way this time, and walked in the direction of the bathroom. Strange’s directions were very concise, and she found the bathroom easily.</p>
<p>Pulling off the scratchy, bloody clothes, despite only wearing them for a few moments, felt amazing. She tossed them in a pile on the floor again, set the clean clothes on the counter next to the sink and climbed into the shower.</p>
<p>Morgan felt like a new person, washing off the dried blood and dirt. As she finished scrubbing herself clean she noticed something. Or rather the lack of something. She had no scars from getting shot, or her trip down the very, very steep ‘hill’. When she examined herself closer, she realized she had no scars at all.</p>
<p>Not the one on her knee from when she fell on concrete when she was ten. Not the one she had on her left hand from burning herself at fifteen. Not even the six-inch-long scar on her right calf from falling out of a tree when she was five. She had loved that one. Her father had been there when it had happened, and bandaged it himself. It always reminded Morgan of him. She felt it’s absence almost as strongly as the ache in her chest.</p>
<p>She did have the real Tony now, she supposed. She didn't need a scar to remind her. But she was still sad.</p>
<p>Morgan felt a little inhuman. Her heartbeat quickened slightly, and she took deep breaths of the steamy air to calm it. She shut off the water and climbed out, still reeling from her discovery. She dried off quickly, and fumbled with the clothes on the counter, eager to cover up her flawless skin.</p>
<p>She dropped one of the garments on the ground in her haste and picked it up carefully. It was a set of robes. After she put them on, she decided that she looked rather nice, examining the ensemble in the clouded mirror.</p>
<p>Morgan looked at the bloody clothes on the floor. She did not want to clean them right now. Her stomach growled, and she made the decision to drop them off in her room and head to breakfast.</p>
<p>She left the bathroom, her mind far away from the hallway. She thought about asking Strange about the lack of scarring, but decided that she didn’t want to add extra information to his search for what was going on. It seemed rather inconsequential after everything else.</p>
<p>She quickly dropped the clothes back at the foot of her bed where she had picked them up not long before, and went searching for the room Strange was in.</p>
<p>It wasn’t hard to find him, he was sitting in a room without a door, just off the hallway. She crept inside slowly, observing her surroundings. The room was filled with natural light streaming in from high windows, and most of the surfaces were covered in books. She could see bookshelves in the back as well. The table Strange was sitting at was covered in texts, and there was a single, massive book on the edge of the table.</p>
<p>He noticed her when she was almost close enough to read the title. “Welcome to the library,” he said as he pulled the book off the table to where she couldn’t see it, and nudged some of the papers into a stack. She decided not to comment on it. “Please sit down.”</p>
<p>Morgan sat down in the only other chair at the table, and he pulled a plate of food out of a portal and handed it to her. Eggs. <em>Eggscellent.</em> She thought to herself.</p>
<p>She began eating, and watched as Strange tried to gather up his papers without letting her see what any of them said. Even if he was researching what was going on with her, she didn’t need constant updates, and probably wouldn't be able to decode what any of those scrolls were saying. She paid attention to her food.</p>
<p>He managed to get all of the papers into some semblance of order, and deposited them on a nearby counter. She could hear him muttering under his breath, “Wong’s going to kill me for messing up the piles, damn.” Morgan thought that was very funny, and nearly choked on her eggs while trying not to laugh.</p>
<p>Strange returned to the table, and summoned his own plate of eggs. “We've found a few things,” he began, and Morgan raised an eyebrow at him, “My scans from yesterday indicate that you have had an increase of magical power.”</p>
<p>“What does that mean, and what do I do about it?” She asked.</p>
<p>“I was hoping you’d agree to train with some of the other students while you were here, so I can see if whatever it is has influenced anything else. Besides,” he smiled at her, “you’d probably get bored sitting around all day while we research.” Morgan tilted her head in acknowledgement, knowing how easily she went stir-crazy. “Is Tony here right now?” He asked.</p>
<p>“No,” Morgan answered, “He went to go investigate my kidnapping back in Alaska. He didn’t say when he’d get back, but I can call him if you need.”</p>
<p>“I was just curious. Now, would you at least be willing to try out the training? With the levels of power I scanned off you, it’s almost unsafe to be walking around untrained.”</p>
<p>Morgan thought about it for a moment, trying to guess what training would entail, she was about to ask him exactly that, but he beat her to it. Almost.</p>
<p>“You can just observe today if you’d like. I can take you down to the training grounds and you can watch the lessons.” She nodded, seriously considering just going with it and jumping right in. But then she remembered advice her mother had tried to give her many times over the years. Gather as much knowledge about a situation as you can before jumping into it. This was as good a time as any to start heeding that advice.</p>
<p>“I’ll just observe for today.” She decided, and he nodded and gestured for her to finish her breakfast.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Chapter 12</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Why didn't I post last week? I forgot. Just totally slipped my mind. Not even my reminder notification was strong enough to thwart the forgetfulness.</p>
<p>This chapter is one of the good ones. We finally get some movement. And a character I borrowed from the comics. All the fun stuff.</p>
<p>Enjoy, and let me know what you think!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Doctor Strange dropped Morgan off at the edge of a courtyard in what seemed to be the middle of the Kamar-Taj compound. They had passed her room on the way out, several times it seemed, and Morgan didn’t know if Strange had been attempting to confuse her so she didn’t run off, or if the building had a mind of its own. It was bigger on the inside than it was on the outside, so she wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case, but even with her impeccable sense of direction, she didn’t think she’d be able to find her way back to her room.</p>
<p>The effort could have very well been to keep her from leaving. It had definitely worked if that was the case, but whatever. It was pretty cool here in the courtyard.</p>
<p>There were exactly eleven students and one teacher having a lesson out in the uncovered portion of the outside area. Morgan could tell who the teacher was, because of the eye catching, colored robes they wore. Her own matched the student’s robes, in a nice orange brown.</p>
<p>She watched as each student in turn summoned a glowing gold disc in their hands, and the teacher directed them to slice at the air with it. Some were having great difficulty with it, while others were able to keep the magic going strong for a few long minutes. She watched the hand motions that the instructor showed the students who were struggling, clearly reviewing, but continued to observe closely.</p>
<p>It didn’t seem too hard, and she mimicked them. She could feel something warm sliding under her skin as she did it, and stopped immediately. It brought back the empty ache in her chest, but it actually wasn’t intolerable after her dream last night. <em>Magic works in weird ways</em>, she thought, remembering the lovely relaxed feeling from the dream world.</p>
<p>Morgan dropped her hands in her lap, and watched as the students continued to struggle with their summoning. A few of the ones who had gotten it right away had dispersed around the courtyard, and a few of them were giving her sideways looks. She chose not to pay them any attention, fixing her attention on the teacher’s instruction instead.</p>
<p>She tried mimicking the hand motions a few more times, curious to see if it would work for her, and each time she did, the warm feeling under her skin came back as well as the ache. After the first few times though, the ache had almost faded away to be an afterthought. It was nice, not having it be such a pressing thought, but it also called to mind the few times she had gotten hurt enough to need to heal for a while. Constant pain sitting in the backseat of her life. Morgan shook off that thought, reassured that she didn’t actually have a gaping hole in her chest. That would be silly.</p>
<p>The fourth time she did the hand motions, little orange sparks appeared around her hands. She noticed the color wasn’t the same as the students, but she decided that it probably didn’t matter. And even if it did, Strange would be able to explain it, right?</p>
<p>As she sat there, she noticed one of the students who had wandered off, get a little bit closer to her, obviously trying to sneak up on her.</p>
<p>She seemed to be close in age to Morgan, maybe a few years older if that. The other girl was sneaking pretty poorly, and Morgan decided to see how close the girl could get before realizing that she was being watched.</p>
<p>The other students watched as the girl got closer, and seemed to think that Morgan hadn’t noticed yet, until she made eye contact with another student across the way. She gave him her best press smile, and he blushed and looked away.</p>
<p>The girl was only two pillars away from her when she decided to move. The student looked back at the other students for a moment, and Morgan turned to face her so that when she turned around they would make eye contact.</p>
<p>It happened exactly as she predicted it would. The girl turned around, saw Morgan looking at her, and jumped, her entire body jolting in surprise. Morgan grinned at her, a much more genuine smile than she had given the boy across the way. They all seemed to be slightly intimidated by her. She wasn’t exactly sure why, but she admired the girl for trying to sneak up on her regardless.</p>
<p>It reminded her a little of Peter when they were younger, trying to surprise her. That may have also contributed to how she felt about this girl. So she opened her mouth and said, “Hi! My name’s Morgan,” in a very, very, overly cheerful manner.</p>
<p>The girl looked like a deer in the headlights, trying to catch up with what was going on. “Hi,” She sounded a lot less sure than Morgan had. “I’m Clea. Um, we wanted to know who you are, and why you’re watching us practice.” She looked back towards the other students every few words, as they all tried to look occupied with something other than watching the interaction.</p>
<p>Morgan shifted so she was no longer leaning on the pillar behind her back, and threw her feet off the railing, so she was sitting more like a normal person. She had not expected to have actual conversations this morning, but she supposed there was no getting out of it now. She sighed internally before gearing up to answer Clea’s question.</p>
<p>“Well,” she began, “I’m watching because Doctor Strange thinks I need magic training, and I wanted to figure out what that would be before I agreed to that.” By this point, the teacher and student left in the middle had stopped what they were doing to watch the conversation.</p>
<p>“Would you like to join us?” Called the teacher. She considered that for a moment.</p>
<p>“What are you doing?” She asked in return. She wasn’t going to get caught doing something she couldn’t do, and right now, that unfortunately included magic. The teacher gestured for everyone to return to the uncovered area, and Morgan went with them.</p>
<p>“We’re going to do sparring next,” said Clea, “You don’t have to know any spells to join us.”</p>
<p>The teacher nodded to Morgan. “Clea is correct, if you wish, you can practice with a weapon.” He indicated a pile of practice staffs leaned against a wall. She tilted her head to the side in thought.</p>
<p>She was perfectly capable at hand-to-hand fighting, self-defense was a bit of a must when you were famous and in danger of being kidnapped. Morgan thought of the stances she had seen earlier when the students were practicing, and Clea’s failed attempt at sneaking up on her. It would be fun to try, regardless of whether or not she won. Morgan nodded to the instructor.</p>
<p>A few of the students vocalized their excitement as she went to go pick up a staff. It seemed that they did know who she was. Or just excited to mess with someone new. It was unclear.</p>
<p>She sat on one of the low walls as the teacher split them up into pairs. He put her with Clea, which the girl seemed to be pleased about, and came to sit next to her.</p>
<p>Pair by pair, the students fought little battles, swinging the golden disks at each other, and a few times, even throwing them. They didn’t seem to stay away from punching and kicking either, and each clearly had different styles of fighting.</p>
<p><em>I wonder how she fights?</em> She thought, looking over at her partner. It was unlikely that she was quick and light on her feet, given her lackluster sneaking, but the girl didn’t seem like she’d take the brute force approach either. Morgan’s excitement grew slightly. She was a decent fighter, having some of the greatest mentors in the world, but she also knew she always had room for improvement. This would be very interesting, that was for sure.</p>
<p>It was clear that they were going last, as all the other pairs took their turn. All sets were evenly matched, and most matches passed without either getting any hits before the teacher ended the battle. The second-to-last duo had a very dynamic fight, moving all over the courtyard in their attempts to avoid the other. Just a few seconds before the teacher called time, one lunged and managed to get past the other’s defences, slicing a long cut across the young man’s chest. It was the boy she had smiled at before, and the injury looked painful.</p>
<p>The teacher ordered the boy’s opponent to take him to the infirmary, and the two of them left quickly. He gestured for her and Clea to take their places.</p>
<p>They walked slowly to the center of the courtyard and stood about ten feet apart. Morgan wasn’t more nervous after seeing that boy get hurt per se, but she did hope that the infirmary was decent.</p>
<p>Clea made the hand motion to summon her discs of light, and lowered into a proper fighting stance. Morgan mirrored her, settling into the stance Aunt Nebula had taught her to use with staffs and similar weapons. They paused, waiting for the teacher to begin the match.</p>
<p>When he told them to begin, Clea jumped forward quickly, immediately going to offensive movements. Morgan blocked the discs with the metal staff, and welding sparks flew from where the weapons met. The other girl spun around and tried the same move again, and Morgan responded exactly the same. Clea moved like she was running, fast but not trying to keep her footsteps light. She could see her toes catch on the paving stones a few times, but it didn’t really slow down the girl’s attacks.</p>
<p>After a few moments of pretty much the same lunging and blocking, Morgan got a little bored and dove into a roll, swinging the staff out at Clea’s feet. The girl narrowly avoided it by leaping backward, and flung one of her discs at Morgan. She swatted it back at her, using the staff like a baseball bat. She could feel the metal warming up from all the hits it had taken.</p>
<p>The fight didn’t seem to be going in either of their favors, so Morgan decided to try something new. On Clea’s next attack, she deliberately leaped back up onto the retaining wall, and the girl followed her up.</p>
<p>Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Doctor Strange standing at the entrance of the courtyard, watching the fight.</p>
<p>Morgan used the change in terrain to her advantage, moving fast over the uneven ground, which Clea could not quite keep up with. Then, Clea threw her discs together, at the same time, forcing her to dive back into the main courtyard to avoid being hit.</p>
<p>The other girl ran towards her, and Morgan realized that she was trapped in a corner. The world around her slowed down a bit as she tried to figure out what to do. She really didn’t want to leave any blood out on the floor.</p>
<p>In a split second decision, she decided it wouldn’t hurt to try summoning the discs. If she did, she could counter Clea’s next attack with much more force, and if she didn’t the match would be over anyway.</p>
<p>Morgan made the hand motions she had copied earlier with her free hand, focused on summoning a weapon to fight with. She could feel the warmth under the skin of her hands, and the ache in her chest increasing slightly, but nothing appeared.</p>
<p>Giving one last attempt, she flung out the staff in a wide movement towards Clea, failing to notice the staff growing even warmer under her palms. She thought it was still the same heating up from clashing with the discs.</p>
<p>She looked up as it made contact in an unexpected area, and countered the discs and all the force behind them with ease. Clea was thrown back, losing her grip on her weapons and they flickered out without her concentrating on them.</p>
<p>Instead, Clea, like everyone else in the courtyard, stared at Morgan. Even Morgan was staring at Morgan.</p>
<p>Her staff now had an extension on the end, not unlike the discs. Actually, it was incredibly different from the discs. But the idea was the same. It was a long curved blade in glowing orange light that extended from the end, and there were also little lines of light glinting along the length of the staff.</p>
<p>Clea stared at her from the ground of the courtyard, Strange stared at her from next to a pillar, the teacher stared at her from his place next to the staffs, the other students stared at her from everywhere, and Wong stared at her from his place next to Strange.</p>
<p>Morgan, who was just as surprised as the rest of them, had somehow turned an ordinary metal staff into a glowing orange scythe, which cast an eerie light on the entire yard, even in bright daylight.</p>
<p>And Morgan’s eyes were just as orange as the scythe, but she didn’t know that. Strange and Wong looked at each other in worry.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Chapter 13</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Have a chapter and feed me with comments.</p>
<p>:)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Morgan sat in Doctor Strange’s office, once again a witness to Strange and Wong arguing. At least they were actually in the room with her this time, forgoing their poor attempts at secret keeping.</p>
<p>As the two men argued about “energy fluctuations” and “relic creation” and “the text”, Morgan watched the Cloak of Levitation stack piles of books in increasingly complicated and gravity defying sculptures, and she secretly gave it a thumbs up under the desk. She ignored what the two sorcerers were saying, hardly able to understand half the things the two were saying to each other.</p>
<p>Out the open door she saw Clea and a few of the other students pass. Clea caught her eye and gave Morgan her own thumbs up, and mouthed “Awesome” at her. She grinned as they moved out of sight.</p>
<p>She returned to looking at Strange and Wong, listening closer this time.</p>
<p>“We don’t know that she is able to control it,” said Wong, “and it might lash out against other people. What we saw there couldn’t be a fluke.”</p>
<p>Morgan was missing the context, but she assumed they were talking about the scythe. She looked over at the item as it sat propped up by the hatrack, still pulsing with energy. It had left a smoking gash in the wall they had tried to lean it against at first. She didn’t like that they thought she couldn’t control it. Morgan had summoned it after all, maybe a little bit by accident, but she could still feel its energy. And could therefore control it. Or something along those lines.</p>
<p>“I think it’s still a fine plan to train her,” Strange responded, “I’ll just do it by myself, for the reasons we discussed earlier, and we’ll do it far away from the other students.”</p>
<p>The Cloak was now trying to use some of the very old-looking metal things from off Strange’s shelves in its masterpiece. It seemed very content as the statue grew to be taller than the desk, allowing Morgan to see it’s progress even better from her vantage point. Strange had yet to notice what was being done with the objects.</p>
<p>The two continued to argue, and Morgan let them for another few moments. It was when Strange said “Oh, you really do care about me” that she realized now was the time to act, before the two of them started really shouting and hurling personal insults that might result in the situation not being resolved.</p>
<p>She got up and walked over to the coat rack, and planted herself in front of the scythe. Morgan focused on the energy she could feel radiating off of it, and reached out with her mind, trying to call up the same feeling she had felt while practicing the hand motions in the courtyard before.</p>
<p>Her hands warmed up, and she could feel the familiar ache start. It felt comforting now, not painful. She didn’t know how she could have ever thought it was painful.</p>
<p>When she felt like she had a good enough connection to the blade, she told it to shut off. Or made it shut off. Those things are almost identical when you’re doing things with your mind. But it felt like the right thing to do, even to her untrained mind.</p>
<p>The blade disappeared, leaving the staff behind, looking mostly unremarkable, except from the deep scores in the metal, where the light had broken through.</p>
<p>Strange and Wong stopped arguing and stared at her again, which all of a sudden felt too natural, and Morgan hated it.</p>
<p>She grabbed the deactivated scythe and sat down heavily in her chair, leaning forward to obtain the effect she wanted. “I’m right here you know,” she said with bitterness, “You could talk to me, rather than about me.”</p>
<p>Morgan had always hated the feeling of being stared at. People had watched her her whole life, waiting for her to either live up to her parents legacy, or fail it. It was why she liked hiking so much. Trees and mountains don’t stare. They have their own thing going on. It was always nice to get away from prying eyes.</p>
<p>But when they did look at her, she responded with lovely, lovely attitude. Most people backed off, and those who didn’t were cowed by her. Good stage presence was a godsend honestly. She could always be taken seriously when she wanted to be, and get people to respect her.</p>
<p>Strange looked like he was caught like a deer in headlights, and Wong took a step back. The weight of her apparent anger took both of them by surprise.</p>
<p>Strange gave Wong a look, and the other man left the room. Strange sat down in his chair and took a breath. “I’m sorry. You definitely need to train after what we’ve seen today,” He looked at the staff, which rested in her lap. “I’m not sure why you were able to do that, but we need to find out and prevent future accidents.”</p>
<p>She nodded for him to continue, refusing to drop her icy glare. “I will train you alone, without other students, in the hopes that no one gets hurt.” He continued.</p>
<p>“Fine,” she said, and decided to push her luck a bit, “Have you found any explanation for all of this yet?”</p>
<p>She watched as he thought for a split second, unsure of what to tell her. “We’ve found a few things, but I’d like to wait until we have a more complete picture before we make assumptions about what it is.”</p>
<p>He definitely wasn’t telling her something, but Morgan knew that if all they had was scrolls and texts from their library, it was unlikely she could come to any conclusion, even if she had access to all their sources. It wouldn't help if she demanded information. She nodded slowly, and a bit cautiously. He looked relieved.</p>
<p>“And why exactly makes you think I’m going to hurt someone?”</p>
<p>Strange looked a little uneasy, and he looked up at  Wong standing to the side of his desk. The other man glared at him. He sighed heavily and said, “I think any untrained ability has the potential to be dangerous, and we just saw how dangerous yours can be.”</p>
<p>“Fine,” she said, over the conversation, and tired of pretending to be angry, “Can I go explore now?”</p>
<p>He looked slightly taken aback by her quick mood swing, but rolled with it. “Yes, but leave the staff here--” It was too late. Morgan was already gone, the scythe with her.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Morgan had returned to the courtyard, able to map a path better on the return trip to the office. It was deserted after her display earlier, or maybe people didn’t practice after noon. She had no idea. She didn’t really care. She just wanted some space.</p>
<p>The sun was high and beat down on her as she walked to the center of the uncovered area and she swung the staff around a few times, enjoying the sounds it made as it flew through the air.</p>
<p>She reset her stance, and began to focus on the staff’s energy. It had absorbed the spell, and was no longer just a long piece of metal. She could feel it pulse in time with her heartbeat.</p>
<p>Morgan ignited it with barely a thought, the orange light cleaved the air apart. This time, she paid more attention to it, having more time to observe.</p>
<p>It sizzled the air around it, making a faint buzzing noise. The whole thing was solid light, with no core or support. It rather reminded Morgan of a lightsaber.</p>
<p>She also noticed a tiny orange point sticking out of the other end, burning away the moss on the paving stone it rested on. Or not burning? The moss was definitely turning black and dying. It was similar enough.</p>
<p>Morgan sliced it through the air. The sound it made was even better than the staff alone, and the weight and balance of it was perfect. It was warm under her hands, the same as her skin felt when she was calling up magic. It felt wonderful.</p>
<p>It needed a handle out the side, probably. Most scythes she had seen had a grip like that for leverage, and she wanted that. It would make it a much more effective weapon.</p>
<p>She tried some of the staff movements she already knew, but none of them felt quite right. She knew they wouldn’t, but she had never fought with a scythe before. It wasn’t the most common of weapons, after all.</p>
<p>Morgan closed her eyes and took some deep breaths. The spot in her chest began to ache a little, but it felt nice this time. The ache spread to the rest of her body, mingling with the feeling of warmth under her skin. Every fibre of her being sang with rightness, and she lunged, taking the scythe through forms that she didn’t know, but her muscle memory seemed to.</p>
<p>She danced around invisible opponents, and fended off nonexistent attackers. Oh, what she could have done to her kidnappers if she had had this in Alaska.</p>
<p>Morgan continued like this for a long while, and no one interrupted her. No one entered the courtyard. She was alone again, and no one could stare at her. It was almost as nice as being miles from the nearest human.</p>
<p>Her body shook with the effort of fighting, and her muscles trembled in exhaustion as the sun tracked across the sky. The first oranges of sunset had begun to appear in the sky as she slowed down, and fell out of her trance.</p>
<p>The feeling of elation she had felt just a moment before drained from her like water from a bathtub, leaving Morgan exhausted and empty. The warmth beneath her skin was gone as she deactivated the scythe and threw it to the side. She laid down on the cool stone, sweaty and hot from her activities.</p>
<p>The ache had infiltrated her bones and every atom of her body. She dug into her ribs with the fingers hopeful that would ease it, but it did nothing. She laid there as the sky turned completely orange and as the ache slowly dissipated.</p>
<p>She felt uneasy. She didn’t know how to fight with a scythe. She had never picked one up before. Morgan didn’t know how she could have known how to do any of what she had just done, which was fading from her memory by the second, but she did know that it was unnatural. She would mention it to Strange tomorrow. Or the next time she saw him. Whenever that was.</p>
<p>Morgan didn’t want to move. Right here was a good place to sleep, she thought. Moving to her bed was too much of a hassle.</p>
<p>But then she remembered the stares. She didn’t want to be around anyone who would look at her funny, and she was too tired to pretend to not care about them. She cared very much.</p>
<p>She wished for a moment, that none of this had happened. She would still be on her trip in Denali, nearing the end of the trail, where she’d ride a bus back to the trailhead, and go home. Where Mom and Peter and all the others would be waiting to hear about all the things she saw, and to see all the pictures she took.</p>
<p>She rolled over onto her side and dragged herself up, snagging the staff on her way up. It felt heavier this time, her arms noodles after holding it for so long. It still fit perfectly into her grasp though, and she resolved to see if there was anyone here who could teach her to fight with a scythe. If not, she would send a message to Aunt Nebula, or look on the internet.</p>
<p>She’d probably just look on the internet actually.</p>
<p>Morgan wondered if Tony would be back yet as she wandered through unfamiliar hallways in search of her room. The growing darkness didn’t help much.</p>
<p>It was interesting to her that she didn’t feel his absence as much as she thought she would, but then again, she was used to him not being there. But she would deal with those feelings in the morning, she decided as she reached her room, now was the time for sleeping.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Chapter 14</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Have a new chapter</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Morgan pushed the door to her room open, so single mindedly focused on going to sleep she didn’t notice the orange spirit sitting at the desk, watching her in concern. She lay the staff down next to her bed and kicked it under out of sight,  in case one of the sorcerers came in to steal it while she was asleep.</p>
<p>She turned around, ready to shut off the computer so its light wouldn’t distract her from going to sleep, then startled when she realized that the light was just Tony sitting at the desk, and the computer was not actually on. She sat down on the bed and faced Tony, who still looked very concerned, and began to look even more so as Morgan started to laugh hysterically.</p>
<p>“Are you doing ok?” He asked over her laughter, and she nodded at him with great effort. For a moment he seemed at a loss for words. “Am I allowed to ask about the stick you just hid under your bed?”</p>
<p>She nodded again and made an effort to stop laughing. Her sides hurt even more than they had when she had finished down in the courtyard, radiating soreness around her entire torso. “I summoned a magic weapon today,” she said, still in her overly light mood for a moment before, “Strange didn’t seem keen on letting me keep it, so I’m hiding it from him.”</p>
<p>“Right,” he said, “That stick doesn’t look particularly magical, if you ask me.”</p>
<p>Morgan slipped off the bed and reached under it in search of the weapon. After a moment, she pulled it out, covered in dust bunnies. <em>Ew</em>, she thought, and brushed them off before turning back to Tony. “It is very magical now.”</p>
<p>She activated the blade, and Tony’s eyes went wide at the sight of it. He put his hand out, only a few inches away from the glow. “I can feel the heat,” he said in disbelief, “I can’t normally feel things like that.”</p>
<p>“But you can feel me right?” Morgan was puzzled at his statement.</p>
<p>“I think we already know you’re a special case, sweetheart.” She snorted at that.</p>
<p>Morgan flipped it around a few times for him as he watched it carefully. “You said you summoned it,” he said, “What does that mean?”</p>
<p>She started to recount the day’s activities to him, glossing over her conversion with Strange, merely telling her father that he was going to train her. She told him in detail about the match with Clea, and how she had copied the lesson and had tried to summon one of the disc things.</p>
<p>Tony looked pensive. “I’ve always thought magic was kind of unreliable. Of course, Strange thought differently and saw it as a science,” he looked at her with a slight grin, “You know, making glowing things appear in the air really isn’t <em>that</em> cool.”</p>
<p>Morgan saw the joke and pretended to be outraged. “You take that back right now, old man!” He laughed.</p>
<p>With neither of them focused on the scythe at this point, she deactivated it and threw it under the bed again. They laughed together for a few minutes before Tony’s mirth faded.</p>
<p>“I found some leads in Alaska,” he said, reminding Morgan why he had been gone, “There was a bus that had been registered as rented during the timeframe that makes sense, but the group that rented it didn’t return it. The renters were a group from the Roxxon Energy Corporation who were apparently there as a team building exercise. They abandoned the bus at the end of the road and disappeared into thin air.”</p>
<p>“Nobody noticed?” She said, “Bus trips through the park don’t take very long.”</p>
<p>“They didn’t until after a park ranger found the bus,” he looked disappointed, “That’s when they looked back at the records. Mind you, I actually was listening to them discuss this with the police, so they didn’t do anything about it until now.”</p>
<p>She shook her head, “Someone could also have been paid off.” Tony shrugged at that. “We should look into Roxxon though. Whoever it was could have used it as a cover, but it’s the best lead we have so far.” Tony got up so she could sit at the desk, and they switched places. Morgan yawned.</p>
<p>She booted up the computer, and decided to look into the company before they did anything else.</p>
<p>Morgan typed ‘Roxxon Energy Corporation’ into the search engine and clicked on the first result, the company's official website. She paraphrased out loud for Tony, who probably couldn’t see the screen from where he was sitting.</p>
<p>“It’s headquartered in Manhattan, it mines and refines oil, as well as a few other natural resources. Annual revenue exceeds 500 billion, and it employs more than 50,000 people worldwide. Sounds fun,” Morgan exited the website and clicked on another link, this one to what appeared to be a public forum. “Now, this is what I’m looking for.” Tony got up and went to read over her shoulder.</p>
<p>He read the first post out loud. “Roxxon has its hands in anti-environmental laws, and they have some pretty shady connections to HYDRA. The board of directors has a personal strike team. This company is SHADY.” He stressed the last word like it was written in the post. “The anti-environmental laws thing is jogging some memories.”</p>
<p>“Anything good?” Morgan asked as they settled into their previous positions, facing each other. Morgan sprawled out her limbs anywhere they would stick, feet up on the desk.</p>
<p>“I met a few higher-ups at a green energy conference Stark Industries was sponsoring. We were trying to get the city of New York to switch over to renewable energy sources. Security had to escort the Roxxon people out because they were so disruptive to the presentations.”</p>
<p>“They’re that anti-environmental?” Morgan asked.</p>
<p>Tony squinted at the computer screen. “I certainly remember it that way. Pepper would know more, if they ever contacted us. I think I met the CEO a few times?”</p>
<p>“Don’t remember?” She teased.</p>
<p>Tony smirked. “They all look the same after a while, especially if you’re not interested in what they’re sprouting.”</p>
<p>Morgan looked back to the computer screen. “You think the strike team thing is true?”</p>
<p>“You got kidnapped by enhanced humans who worked together like they knew how to. They sounded experienced, even if not with kidnapping.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You think it was them?”</p>
<p>“I wouldn’t call it an impossible option, they did use the company name to get the bus.”</p>
<p>Morgan scrunched up her face in disbelief. “It just seems so messy, especially for what I assume were professionals.” Tony shrugged.</p>
<p>“It’s the best lead we have so far.” Morgan nodded and turned around to face the computer again, navigating to where she could talk to FRIDAY.</p>
<p>“You get any of that Fri?” She asked the AI.</p>
<p>“You want me to look into Roxxon?” FRIDAY guessed, only having half the conversation and the searches to work off of.</p>
<p>“Right. Dad found that the bus I got held on was rented by a Roxxon retreat group that disappeared into thin air at the end of the road.”</p>
<p>“I’ll look into it.” FRIDAY’s display began to go into dormant mode, and Morgan shut off the screen for the night. She looked up at Tony.</p>
<p>“That’s everything?” Ne nodded.</p>
<p>“You should probably get some rest now, you look dead on your feet,” Morgan shrugged half-heartedly. Sleep sounded wonderful. “I’m going to go see if I can figure out what Strange is doing in that library of his. Sleep well Mo.”</p>
<p>She waved him off with a smile and went slack in the chair the second he was gone. Morgan could feel the stickiness of dried sweat on her clothes and skin from the day, and knew she should go shower.</p>
<p>But she was so tired. She just wanted to lay down and sleep. Talking to Tony took so much more out of her, especially after the day she’d had. Morgan felt like there was a fog across her mind, preventing her from thinking too hard.</p>
<p>She loosely remembered training with the scythe, and the discomfort of not knowing how she knew what she did.</p>
<p>So Morgan Stark did what she did best, which is to ignore what made her uncomfortable and move on.</p>
<p>So she thought instead of Roxxon, and how ludicrous it seemed that a competing energy company would kidnap the heir of a competitor. It made her laugh. If they were right, which she knew was the most likely option, the corporation would be in so much hot water when Pepper found out.</p>
<p>Then Morgan remembered that her mother had no idea what was happening to her, and had no idea what had happened before. She felt bad for a moment, then remembered how her mother had hated when her father kept going out to fight as Iron Man.</p>
<p>It was something that she had been told a lot about, from various family members. She didn’t want to worry her mother. Pepper Potts-Stark had enough going on in her life as is. Morgan could deal.</p>
<p>With that cheery thought, she began to strip off the sticky clothes, draping them over the back of the desk chair in the hopes that they’d feel nicer the wear in the morning. Morgan was still not in the mood to try to get her old clothes presentable.</p>
<p>She did a few stretches to prevent stiffness in the morning. Peter had taught her to do that, after seeing her unable to move after her first few lessons in fighting with him. She knew in her heart that she’d still be way too stiff in the morning, but it was nice to try to take care of herself.</p>
<p>Every vertebrae in her spine cracked as she leaned back with her arms up over her head. Stretching also felt really nice.</p>
<p>After she finished, Morgan climbed under the covers, shivering at the slide of fabric against her still sweaty body. Dried sweat was even more unpleasant than dried blood, she decided, as someone who ought to know.</p>
<p>She yawned once more, before she closed her eyes. Less than ten minutes passed before Morgan fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, assisted by her physical exhaustion.</p>
<p>There were no dreams of orange, or falling.</p>
<p>Morgan would realize this in the morning, and adjust her schedule accordingly. It was best if she didn’t have those dreams anymore. They were so strange and unpleasant. Every day after, she would work out as hard as she could before bed, in the hopes of sleeping dreamlessly. It would work.</p>
<p>After all, her powers were getting a workout too. There was no reason to give Morgan visions when no additional outlet was necessary. It was a balance that everyone would be happy with.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Chapter 15</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Here's a dramatic training montage with feelings.</p>
<p>Probably won't post next weekend because I'm behind on a paper for school, but who knows.</p>
<p>I like the transitions in this chapter, but not the writing. Was too lazy to edit much past spelling though. Enjoy.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was fascinating to train with Strange, as he was so often surprised by what Morgan was capable of, and how quickly she mastered things.</p>
<p>It made their lessons go fast, and was ultimately what made Strange agree to find her a teacher for scythe fighting.</p>
<p>The lack of time spent in lessons gave Morgan large amounts of free time, and the sorcerers didn’t want her just wandering around.</p>
<p>Wong especially wanted her occupied, and away from the library. So she got her scythe lessons, and her magic lessons, and also didn’t get any answers out of Strange and Wong.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>“Surely you’ve found something by now.” Morgan said to Strange as they practiced summoning small bursts of energy.</p>
<p>“I don’t have anything I can tell you yet.” He responded. They were in the courtyard, sitting a few feet away from each other, just out of reach. Morgan thought that these sessions where he made her pull little flames of magic out of the air were quite useless, and had made her opinion very clear before. Strange had told her they would be moving on soon.</p>
<p>All they were doing was making the ache in her chest and the warmth under her skin permanent features. Which was fine, but she could do so much more.</p>
<p>Her scythe lessons were progressing much faster.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Her scythe teacher blocked her attack with his own blade, deflecting the move down towards the ground. Morgan dove into the force and rolled out of the lock.</p>
<p>Master Yao shot her a grin and continued his attack. She knew she was improving at a great rate.</p>
<p>The teacher came forward, not even slightly scared of her unorthodox weapon composition. He struck the energy like it was made of metal, trusting her ability to hold it.</p>
<p>Her ability to do that had started out inconsistent, sometimes letting the blade dematerialize while she was fighting, but that had also improved greatly. She had been cut once by Yao’s own scythe, and it was one of the times she had failed to hold the magic together.</p>
<p>Morgan didn’t even feel sore after practicing most days. Instead, she felt wonderful. Practicing also had the nice side effect of making it so she didn’t get nightmares, so she was glad for the practice.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Morgan slept well almost every night, speaking with Tony a while before bed, getting to know the father she had missed so much. His stories were like lullabies, helping her drift off into a deep sleep quickly.</p>
<p>It was also nice to learn about him, and he her. He told her about how it felt to be Iron Man, and how Iron Man had come to be. She liked those stories. He also told her stories about Peter when they had first met, and stories about Uncle Rhodey while they were in college (She maybe shouldn’t have been told some of those. Her Dad and Uncle didn’t set very good examples), and stories about Mom. The stories of their family were her favorites.</p>
<p>Morgan told him about how much she loved hiking, and photography, and how she had always wanted to be a photographer for National Geographic. “Running the company will be fun,” she had said, “But that would be what I could do if I could do anything.” She had told him about how she loved science fiction novels, about space specifically, because they reminded her of Aunt Nebula.</p>
<p>They got to know each other very well, as it was always meant to be.</p>
<p>Morgan slept without nightmares, dreaming only of the stories her father had told her, even when they were a bit scary. She loved hearing them, even if she had heard a lot of them before, because she had never heard them from Tony and that made them special.</p>
<p> He had told her a few stories about Strange too. From the little time he had known him, he had a few impressions. There were a lot of nicknames. She loved those too.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Stephen Strange himself didn’t think being called ‘Harry Potter’ was very funny, especially when Morgan did it during training.</p>
<p>He didn’t really mean to hide what was happening to her, from her. But that’s what they were doing anyway. Strange did feel bad about it, but not enough to overcome the reasoning behind it. Or at least not enough to get Wong to relent his position.</p>
<p>The reality was that Morgan Stark was potentially very dangerous right now.</p>
<p>The scythe was a nice touch, even he would admit, with the apparent death theme the book touted, but he really should have just taken it. But it kept her occupied and out of the library, where they were keeping all of the records and texts they had found. He couldn’t be training her at all times.</p>
<p>Perhaps he would have felt more inclined to tell her if she wasn’t telling the truth about seeing the elder Stark. The presence had shown up on most of the scans he had taken, always consistent with if Morgan reported her father’s presence. That was the only part he saw evidence in favor of the book, with the exception of Morgan’s own powers. He wasn’t really a believer at that point, but Wong was still convinced she was as dangerous as a live bomb.</p>
<p>At least she was keeping away from most of the other students, with the exception of Clea. But the girls could manage themselves. He wasn’t worried.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Morgan and Clea got along well, and Morgan had fun spending time with her. At least there was another person here who didn’t think she was dangerous.</p>
<p>The girl had sparred with Morgan a few more times, after she had seen that Morgan had her magic under control. They fought with regular staffs mostly, to avoid injuries.</p>
<p>The medic wasn’t fond of Morgan, so avoiding the infirmary became a top priority when she had gotten hurt that one time with Master Yao. She had healed almost immediately, like she had after the cliff, but she still had been made to spend some time with the healer, cementing her dislike.</p>
<p>But Clea was nice. She kind of reminded her of how FRIDAY had interacted with her when it was just the two of them, hiking somewhere in the middle of nowhere. A little bit mother hen-ish, and a little bit like a best friend.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>FRIDAY’s investigation had progressed nicely.</p>
<p>It had been quick work to find her way to the Roxxon database, and not too much more to hack into it. It would have taken her even less time, but Pepper needed her processing power for the company most of the time, so the AI allowed the process to slow a little bit. Which wasn’t actually that much considering she was a computer, and computers do fast work, but it was still an avoidable delay.</p>
<p>She would see about expanding onto some new servers soon.</p>
<p>But the Roxxon servers had not yielded fruit. They did not contain profiles for a “strike team” in the employee database, but the AI was so sure she was missing something.</p>
<p>And there it was. A mention of the “Elite Roxxon Strike Team” on a former security guards transfer record. It was exactly what she was looking for. However, it seemed that all information on the matter was stored elsewhere, and FRIDAY began searching for clues again.</p>
<p>She had been occupied by other things as well, namely hearing about Morgan’s training, and listening in on Tony and Morgan’s storytelling, trying to guess what Tony was telling Morgan from the girl’s reactions.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>“That training session was an absolute disaster,” said Wong to Strange one day in the library. “You could have gotten hurt as easily as she did.”</p>
<p>“Again,” Strange said with the annoyance of someone who’d already repeated their story several times, “It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t even her magic. It was mine. It reacted badly to her for some reason and back fired onto her.”</p>
<p>“Some reason! We need to know why! Not just for some reason!” Wong flipped through the Soul Stone book with fury, nearly ripping at the pages. “We can’t let her be around anyone else until this is resolved.”</p>
<p>Strange sighed. “I’m not going to delay her next lesson for the sake of this. More lessons will help her control.”</p>
<p>“She’s hurt as well.”</p>
<p>“Morgan had been healing extremely fast. Judging by how she’s healed in the past I wouldn’t be surprised if she was up and running around in the morning.” He pulled the book away from Wong and set it next to him, out of the other man’s reach. “And just how were you planning to keep her away from the other students? She wouldn’t take to being locked in her room very well, I think.”</p>
<p>Wong grumbled unintelligibly and tried to grab the book back. “You know,” said Strange, holding the book out of Wong’s reach, “I think we’re being too reliant on this thing. Agamotto himself said that this was all theory, and we’re treating it like gospel.”</p>
<p>“It’s all we have to go on,” argued Wong, “It’s closer to right than we have any chance of being!”</p>
<p>“What if it’s wrong though? There’s no reason to halt her training over what this book says.”</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Tony had watched that session, and was very worried about Morgan. To him, it had looked like Strange’s magic had lashed out and burned Morgan down the entire left side of her body.</p>
<p>Maybe the wounds weren’t actually that serious, but he was her father. Of course he was going to overreact a little, even as he watched her heal before his eyes a little while later.</p>
<p>Feelings that had cropped up a few times before had come back in full force. The time she had gotten hurt while training with her scythe was especially vivid in his mind.</p>
<p>Yes, she healed quickly now, but seeing the look of pain on her face when she got hurt felt like someone was digging Tony’s heart out of his chest. He hated it. Morgan needed to be protected.</p>
<p>So he hatched a plan to protect her better.</p>
<p>That night, after Morgan was tucked into bed sleeping, he traveled to New York. Specifically Stark Tower, which he had bought back after the first snap. It had once had the manufacturing machines to make the armor. Tony wanted to know if they were still there.</p>
<p>Tony was in Kathmandu one second, and in New York the next. The fast travel was a perk of being dead.</p>
<p>He appeared on the landing deck, remembering his landings there so well that he didn’t need to focus very hard on getting there.</p>
<p>He descended into his old lab, walking the stairs, despite not being bound by physical barriers. He just liked walking this hallway as if he was still alive.</p>
<p>What snapped Tony out of his imagining, was when the lights didn’t come on when he entered. FRIDAY didn’t even know he was here right now. He couldn’t talk to his bots, which made him a little sad, but when he saw them missing anyway, he remembered that Peter had taken them down to his own lab at some point.</p>
<p>It must be nice to have that company. But he did have Morgan now, to talk to. No one he could spend time with in death was very interesting to him, but he was glad that none of his family had died yet. Or died permanently yet.</p>
<p>He moved through the dark lab, looking at the undisturbed space, everything just where he remembered it. That meant that the armor making components were still here.</p>
<p>He smiled at the inanimate metal. Some things never let you down.</p>
<p>This way, he could help Morgan make armor for herself, and she would be safer. Tony knew that she wouldn’t be completely safe, he had been through too much in his own armor to think that.</p>
<p>Morgan could protect herself now, he had watched her nearly decapitate Master Yao too many times to think anything different, but today proved that there were some things she couldn’t counter with a scythe and magic.</p>
<p>But she would be safer now. And that’s all he really wanted.</p>
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